Fiction
by Akino Ame
Summary: Growing up isn't easy for Koichi, but at least he has his brother at his side to help him out. But two mysterious girls, Jeri and Alice, make this chore even harder.
1. Key of the Twilight

_"I believe in fantasies invisible to me_  
_In the land of misery, I'm searching for the sign  
__To the door of mystery and dignity  
__I'm wandering down…I'm searching the secret sun."  
__.hack/SIGN: "Key of the Twilight"_

_Recommended Music:  
The past/The present—"Liminality," full version  
Shopping for Mom/Mishio's entry/Alice—"Key of the Twilight"_

Fiction  
Track 01: "Key of the Twilight"

Outside, the battle was raging on as Takato, Rika, Henry, and Ryo fought desperately to drive back the D-Reaper. But inside, Jeri wasn't sure she was going to make it. Already the red sludge was up to her ankles, threatening to consume her. She would drown—if the chaos didn't possess her first. It had already taken on her form in order to cause such destruction, so what would stop it from taking her over completely? There would be no stopping it then.

"It's getting higher!" she cried, clutching Calumon all the tighter. The chaos looked and felt like coagulated blood, but it was hot, hotter than even the fires of Zhuqiaomon back in the Digital World. "I…don't know how much time we have." Both she and Calumon had red tinges to their faces, but not from the heat. It was the fear and the realization that their journey was over—and it was to end like this. Her friends were supposed to be there to save her; why weren't they? "Oh, Takato, where are you?" Her fear intensified even more. She wasn't going to be able to see her naïve but brave friend Takato or her tough-hearted yet understanding best friend Rika. And she wasn't going to be able to tell Beelzemon just how sorry she was that she brought him into this. It wasn't his fault Leomon was killed. It had been Leomon's choice to take up that destiny. Beelzemon had just brought it about.

And as she tried to keep from crying, a strange reflection was present in her eyes. The eyes were the windows to the soul, and her windows showed the face of the D-Reaper's Jeri-type Agent.

_One Year Later  
_A group of seven adults and eight children gathered around a long table, looking long and hard at the evidence before them. One of the children, a thirteen-year-old boy with brown hair and goggles, stared at the file folders in devastation. Hadn't it been only a year ago that he revealed his true feelings to her? And now she had betrayed them all and run away to God knows where.

"I'm sorry."

The two words came from a black-clad girl of his age in front of him. Her normally expressionless ice blue eyes were filled with sympathy. She had been warning of this for months, and they'd all been too stubborn to believe her. It wasn't she who should have been sorry; he was the fool. His only answer was a terrible shake of his head to prove that it wasn't her fault. But this sign forced the tears from his eyes, spilling them around him. She could no longer look at him without guilt; she couldn't look at any of them without guilt.

A tall blonde man removed his dark sunglasses to expose his brown eyes, eyes that were just as emotional as theirs. He stood up and placed down one of the files, unable to make his speech if he had to hold it and stare at the photo of the young girl.

"She's escaped to another world now, so that is what we must worry about. Ryo, do you know anything about this dimension?"

A fifteen-year-old boy with brown hair and cerulean eyes shook his head. "And even if I did go out there and try to find out about it, you wouldn't be able to bring me back. Your technology's too limited. And I haven't actually dimension-hopped since ZeedMillenniumon's fusion with Monodramon. I honestly don't want to chance having to do it with Cyberdramon out of fear for what the Millenniumon half of him might do. And I don't dare leave him unsupervised. He's hard enough to handle when I'm around."

"All right," the man agreed reluctantly. They couldn't afford to risk anything like that; from Ryo's stories, Millenniumon had been just about as—or even more—dangerous as any of the Four Digimon Sovereign. It was too much of a gamble that a return to back-and-forth dimension crossing might entice his wilder persona to take over completely. "We'll need to send someone to investigate and stop her."

"I…I should go," the boy with goggles decided. A lump caught his voice in his throat, so he swallowed repeatedly to regain his nerve. "If anyone should stop her, it should be someone she knows and trusts."

"But that gives me just as much of a right as you to go," a red-haired girl of his same age argued. "Besides, that Agent already fought you at your best. She's never faced me and Renamon."

"You Tamers are needed too much to leave," the Gothic girl informed. "I don't have a Digimon, and neither does she. I don't have to worry about leaving our world one or two Digimon short. Besides, I'm the only one with any right to go. I was the one that saw this coming long ago. Therefore, I know that I can track her best without my emotions clouding my judgment. I hate to say it, but you would all fail too easily because of it."

There was a long silence as they all stared down, unable to speak. She was right, but nobody wanted to admit it—just like how they wanted to admit the tragedy that had just struck them. It was their emotions that had blinded them to this in the first place. Their emotions could easily create an even worse situation if they were to go.

"All right," the blonde man decided. "We have the dimensional gateway set up here along with a COM-device that will allow you to contact us when everything's safe. When it is, we can transport her parents and brother there."

"But she needs an anchor," a red-haired man with a bushy beard reminded them. "Crossing worlds even Ryo's way isn't as easy as it sounds. I had to be comatose just to go to the Digital World."

"And I lost my memories when I followed ZeedMillenniumon," the boy earlier addressed as Ryo added. "Mr. Mizuno's right. Without an anchor, she could suffer the same."

"Then we're back to where we started," a blonde woman replied. "There's no one we can send who could act as the anchor without suffering the same results."

"Not really, Daisy," another redheaded man—much older than the rest of them—protested. "I can act as the anchor. I can just burn the instructions for what to do on a CD-ROM. The memory loss isn't permanent anyway, and Alice can remind me of everything just the way Monodramon did for Ryo."

"Still, Dolphin," a Chinese man with graying hair argued, "the ramifications might not be just mental. Ryo was a lot younger than you are when he passed through space."

"Yeah," the man's son agreed, "and he was unable to be hurt because of being connected to Millenniumon."

"I understand your concern, Janyu, Henry, but I have to do this," the man identified as Dolphin informed. "Alice is my granddaughter, and I can't let her be permanently left in another world any more than you can let Henry do the same, Janyu. And I'm the only family she has left."

"Besides, if I remember correctly, Ryo also traveled through time as well," his granddaughter added.

A bald African-American man groaned slightly and muttered, "Never argue with a McCoy."

"You're both fools, you know that?" an Indian woman asked.

"Yes, but so were they, Curly," Dolphin answered, pointing to the children. "They were foolish to believe that they could fight against beings with the powers of gods and an anti-god, and yet they still succeeded. And if you know it's so futile to argue with us, Babel, why don't you warn the others beforehand?"

"Can't, Teach. They don't listen to me any more than the kids listen to us."

"But what's going to happen to Jeri?" a small eight-year-old girl questioned.

"Yeah," a brown-haired boy wearing a visor agreed. "Just what are you going to do, Alice?"

"I'll try all I can," she promised. "If necessary, I'll ask their DigiDestined or Tamers for help."

"How do you know there will be Tamers or anything like that there?" a black-haired boy with glasses checked.

"I don't, but if Ryo's adventures are any indication, there's a set of DigiDestined or Tamers in every world so long as you look for them."

"If everything's settled," her grandfather interrupted, "I'd like to get started now. Yamaki, if you'd be so kind?"

"I have the instructions burning right now," he informed. "It'll give you just enough time to say goodbye."

Dolphin turned to his granddaughter and explained, "I'll be waiting for you to come. When I get through, pack our stuff—Yamaki and the others'll help you—and I'll call for you in a couple of days."

"Okay," she answered. She knew everything was going to be fine, but she still felt as though she would cry. Her mother had died giving birth to her, and her father died when she was ten, leaving her grandfather as her only family. She could not lose him.

_I won't, _she promised herself. _Nobody's going to die, and I'll see to that._

It took only a few minutes, but it seemed so much shorter when Yamaki handed over the burned files and COM device to Dolphin and the other adults prepared the dimensional gate. She stood in front of the glowing vortex, looking at the white X of lightning as it danced between two steel columns. Her grandfather entered it and waved goodbye to her, forcing her to wave goodbye with a small smile despite the tears in her eyes. For a long time, everything was fine and operating nominally, but a loud scream of pain and terror erupted out of it, nearly shattering sensors with its intensity. Somehow despite it all, she managed to scream even louder:

"Grandfather!"

_One Month Later  
_"Are you absolutely _sure_ that's the one she wants?"

"Of course I am. She's been staring at it forever, sighing as she walked past the store. She's just never had the money for it."

"It better be the right one. You may have had to save up a little longer, but at least you didn't have to pretend you were buying something small."

A lower tone, more sympathetic. "Dad's still not happy about this?"

A shake of the head. "I understand that he doesn't want me spending too much on Mom when I've only seen her a few times in my life, but I can't keep from doing this."

"Well, if he asks, say it was my fault."

"That's what I was planning on anyway."

"Funny."

"You know I have no sense of humor."

Silence. Then…

"Shut up, Koji."

Eleven-year-old twins Koichi Kimura and Koji Minamoto stood in a department store in downtown Shibuya, attempting to buy a present for their mother's birthday. Of course, this was a lot easier said than done. Koji, having grown up for ten years with his father (three with his stepmother as well), had no idea what he was supposed to buy, and Koichi, having grown up with their underpaid mother, knew what to buy without having enough money for it. To add to the problem, their father wasn't entirely pleased with Koji's desire to spend a little more time with his mother, and Koji was still a little bitter about the lie he'd been told his whole life about his mother's being dead. Koichi was a tad angry over that as well, as was his mother. The only member of their family who wasn't annoyed by the whole situation was their stepmother Satomi. Or Koji's dog for that matter.

The gift in question was a satin-lined faux fur coat—not very expensive, but a bit beyond the budget of a sixth grader. The boys' mother, Tomoko, had tried it on often during trips to the store but had to forlornly leave it behind due to her lack of funds. Koichi had checked the price himself and determined he'd have about half of the money necessary just before her birthday in November. But remembering that his younger twin was having trouble picking out a gift, he suggested that they save up together and jointly buy the coat. The scheme was perfect, utilizing Koichi's observations and the higher allowances Koji got weekly from their lawyer father.

The twins took the coat up to the cash register and counted out their money before adding it together. But Koji took notice of the brightly colored wrapping paper behind the cashier and asked, "Should we get it gift wrapped?"

Koichi took note of the price of gift-wrapping. While Koji had enough to pay for it, he didn't. And he didn't want Koji to pay too much for this, so he shook his head. "We're better off doing it ourselves. I know where we can get some good wrapping paper." _And at a reasonable price,_ he added to himself, but he wouldn't dare say this in front of his brother. He too had a good deal of pride to maintain, and for that, he would not force himself or those around him to feel inferior to others.

The coat was placed in a box and then a shopping bag. Koji accepted the bag when it was handed to him and walked out of the crowded shop just a few minutes ahead of his brother. Once he felt like he could breathe again without feeling closed in, he met Koichi's questioning gaze.

"I hate this time of the year."

"Too crowded?"

Koji nodded. "I still don't like being pushed around in a crowd."

Koichi stared up at the skyscrapers around them as though he'd never seen anything like them in his life. "I don't blame you. We spent the most important part of our lives in a place where there were no huge cities to confine us. Now that we're back, it's like we can't adjust. It's weird." When he looked down, he noticed that his brother was bent over, holding his chest and straining to breathe. "Are you okay?"

Koji held up a single finger, indicating for his brother to wait a minute. He coughed for a couple of minutes before righting himself. "I'm okay."

"Sick again?"

"I'm fine," he insisted.

"This is the sixth time since we got home. First a cold, then a stomach virus, then bronchitis, then a panic attack or something, then another stomach virus, and now this. Maybe you caught something in the Digital World?"

"Koichi, I'm all right. I'm a little tired, and I'm coughing a little. It's fall—allergy season. Nothing to worry about."

"Never really thought you were one for allergies. You withstood nature at its fullest in the Digital World."

"Maybe I didn't develop any until recently. There _were_ different plants there. Or maybe my body's still adjusting to being home."

Koichi risked another peek at the sky, overcast by gray clouds. It meant rain was coming, but he was thinking currently of another type of gray cloud that hung over cities. "And there wasn't any pollution. You're right; it's probably just your body getting used to this bad air."

"Let's just get to that store already. I'll breathe better when we're inside."

"It's in Harajuku—are you sure you'll be okay to take the train?"

"Koichi, you're my brother, not my babysitter. I'll be fine."

"If you say so."

* * *

A thirteen-year-old girl with fawn-colored hair and eyes of the same color stood at the window of a store, watching and waiting. She had not bothered to buy anything, and all attempts to ask her to leave had ended rather painfully for the shopkeeper. Finally, the police got involved, and she merely knocked them out cold with a single blow to the chest area. Too afraid to do anything again, the shopkeeper meekly continued business while only the most desperate customers bought cards. 

"Miss Mishio?" a female voice questioned. The girl at the window turned to see a familiar blonde teenager standing directly behind her. "Are you finished with your little crusade?"

The girl called Mishio grinned without pleasure, her dead brown eyes reflecting nothing. "Heh heh" came out of her lips, but it held no meaning.

"Enough," the blonde replied. "I can't bring you home, but I can stop you here."

"You may think so, Alice McCoy," Mishio answered in a flat tone. It was only then that the blonde, Alice, observed a device similar to a one-touch light affixture in her hands.

"Oh no," she realized. "Everybody in the back!"

* * *

After a couple of train rides and a little more arguing over Koji's health, the brothers arrived at the card shop in Koichi's hometown of Harajuku. At first, the two didn't think to suspect any danger, but old instincts developed in the Digital World suddenly resurfaced, allowing them to hear the just audible shout from inside and step far enough back as the glass window was blown away. 

A blonde teenage girl dressed all in black fell out of the gaping hole that had been the window, coughing from the explosion. A brunette of the same age—except she wore a light gold dress, a brown leather jacket, and dirtied slippers—then roughly picked her off the sidewalk and threw her against the wall, using impossibly sharp nails to slash across her chest. The blonde slumped to the ground, frantically trying to breathe as a red substance—not blood—burned at her wound. Finally, unable to do anything else, she cast modesty aside and removed her shirt.

It only took a fraction of a second for the boys to react. Koji quickly removed the coat from the shopping bag and tossed it toward the girl, who put it on quickly. He and Koichi were about to try to reason with (and if necessary, fight) the brunette, but she was gone.

"I didn't think she'd leave so soon," the blonde commented. "She was definitely waiting here for you two, but why she'd just leave without doing anything is a mystery to me." She carefully picked up her old shirt with two fingers as if it was something disgusting and glanced from it to fallen people within the store. "Just as I thought. She reserved the active chaos for me."

"Chaos?" Koichi repeated.

"You two need to come with me," the girl informed.

"What about them?" Koji questioned, gesturing to the unconscious people within the store.

"They'll be fine for now. I asked other customers to call for help just before the explosion. I'll have to mention this to Grandfather." She turned and began to walk away. But when she noticed nobody was following her, she stopped and requested, "Please don't lag behind."

The twins glanced at each other with a suspicious gaze. Neither knew what to make of this situation. First, a mysterious vanishing girl had apparently taken it upon herself to be their stalker, and now, an equally mysterious girl was telling them to follow her to who knows where.

"You owe us an explanation," Koji informed.

"Just as blunt as Rika," the blonde murmured. She turned around, revealing very pale features. "My name is Alice McCoy, and I need you to come with me."

"But why?" Koichi asked.

"I'll explain everything when we get home. My grandfather is waiting for us." She began to walk away again. "Are you coming?"

Koji, who had a reputation for not trusting people he'd just met, asked his brother, "Do you think we should?"

"I guess," Koichi replied. "At least until we get some answers."

**I own neither _Digimon _nor Ms. Kajiura's songs. All song quotes used are from Yuki Kajiura's CD _Fiction,_ unless otherwise stated (two quotes later on are not from the CD, but the titles are from music pieces). Some songs are from _.hack/SIGN_, others from _Noir. _The ones that say "original" are songs created just for the CD; the music pieces "Zodiacal Sign" and "Awaking" (aren't quoted because they're in a made-up language, I think) are from the anime _Aquarian Age_. All recommended music is the title of the chapter, from _.hack/SIGN, _or from _.hack/Liminality. _For now, I can't say where some information came from. But the name Mishio is from the original planning packet for _Tamers._ A thousand points to the person who can find who Mishio is by going through Chris McFeely's Digimon Encyclopedia. And using Harajuku as Koichi's hometown is only from my warped little mind, just like my habit of having Koji live in Yokohama. ****In addition, there is another Alice/Kouichi fic out there by Rocker Starlight called "Faith in Darkness," so let it be known that I am not this pairing's sole creator. Till the next!**


	2. Cynical World

_"Here we stand in ravishing rain_  
_Joy is like pain  
__It feels like a miracle  
__You can't turn back, you're in chains  
__Never again  
__Return from a cynical world."  
__Original: "Cynical World"_

_Recommended Music:  
Changing/Explanation—"The World"  
Piano/Jeri—"Before Dawn"  
Family problems/Conversation with Jeri—"Cynical World"  
Mother to son/Son to grandmother—"Aura," awakening version_

Fiction  
Track 02: "Cynical World"

"Home," as Alice called it, was a small apartment on the fourth floor of a complex in east Shibuya. It didn't seem very impressive on the outside or the inside, but the Kimura-Minamoto twins didn't say anything about it. They'd learned not too long ago to be thankful to even have a home after their world was destroyed entirely.

All around the apartment were nautical mementos: sailboat models, figurines of marine animals, shells. Alice took her shredded and red-stained shirt and placed it in a special container within a white box with a light blue anchor painted on it. She then walked right past the boys, warning, "Stay right here. I'll be out in a minute, and my grandfather should be around somewhere."

She entered her small bedroom and slid the traditional paper door shut before removing the borrowed coat and placing it carefully on her bed.

_This is pretty expensive for two kids, _she observed. _They definitely bought it for someone they care about—most likely their mother. And they never thought twice about giving it to a stranger, not knowing whether or not they'd get it back. It's no wonder they had been chosen for their task before._

She removed a white-and-black T-shirt from her dresser drawer and pulled it on over her bra. The shirt was a style her old friend Rika wore: white with light-colored sleeves and a dark-colored heart. Rika's had pale blue sleeves and a blue-violet heart. Alice's had heather gray sleeves and a black heart. When she was finished, she gently folded it and carried it out to the boys.

"Thank you for loaning this to me. I assume you just bought it?" They nodded. "For your mother, then." They nodded again. "Koichi's idea." Now, they stared at her, their eyes wide open.

"How…how did you…?" Koichi stammered.

"We didn't even give you our names…" Koji added.

"You didn't need to," a genial male voice explained. "Alice and I have been looking up everything on you we could get our hands on." A red-haired man in a wheelchair appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The twins had been so shocked by Alice's knowledge of them that they didn't hear him coming.

"This is my grandfather," Alice introduced, "Professor Rob McCoy."

"Just call me Dolphin," he offered. "Everybody else does."

Koichi felt really stupid for asking this, but… "Why?" To his good fortune, Koji didn't hit him. If it was anyone else, he would have.

Dolphin McCoy gestured to all of the ocean memorabilia around them. "Kind of obvious, isn't it? I'm a self-described mariner. I've piloted a few sail- and motorboats, but none of the big ships. Could have though. I'm absolutely in love with the sea and everything about it. I even joined the U.S. Navy for a couple of years to pay off my college tuition. But the Navy and I had differing views, so I left to teach in the new field of computer programming in the '80s at Palo Alto University."

"He's essentially retired now," Alice explained, "and devotes most of his time to the study of Digimon and helping me apprehend and neutralize Jeri Katou."

"Is she the girl that attacked you earlier?" Koji guessed.

Alice nodded and produced a picture of a sweet-looking twelve-year-old girl with shoulder-length brown hair. She wore a yellow blouse under a green dress and a sock puppet adorned her right hand. "One year ago October, she was captured by an entity called the D-Reaper and used as its power source and key to the Real World."

"Don't you mean 'Human World'?" Koichi corrected.

"No," Dolphin answered. "Where we come from, it's called the Real World, though your name is a lot more politically correct. Everything in this apartment—the furniture, my collections, everything but you two—came from another Human World and another Digital World."

"We came here in order to stop Jeri," Alice provided. "The D-Reaper was powerful enough to nearly delete every non-organic thing in the world and melt the polar icecaps with its heat. When our team of Digital World saviors, the Tamers, defeated it, everything was brought back to normal—including Jeri. But the D-Reaper kept some of itself in her—I could see it reflected in her eyes—and it resurfaced not too long ago. She came here to continue the D-Reaper's original mission to keep Digimon and humans from expanding past their natural boundaries."

"Why was she after us then?" Koji questioned.

"You two are very special in your roles of DigiDestined—or should I say Legendary Warriors," Dolphin explained. "You have talents that nobody else does, and no one's sure if it's because you were born with it or if it's just from your Spirits. Koichi has the ability to fuse the powers of Light and Darkness so that ten different Spirits can be used to create one all-powerful Digimon, and Koji has the ability to bring people back from the dead."

"But Ophanimon helped me," Koji protested. Dolphin's face was stern. "Didn't she?"

"As far as I know, all she did was provide you with enough strength so that you wouldn't pass out. Try and recall that day. Were you in any way dizzy or tired after the experience?"

Koichi looked at his brother, whose face took up a slight red tinge. From his memory, Koji had been physically and emotionally exhausted when they all left the hospital. But it hadn't seemed so important then because he had cried uncontrollably for quite a while before. But a new revelation pierced his mind, one that he felt foolish for not having noticed before: "You started getting sick just after that." Koji gave him an angry glare while Dolphin considered this new development with a serious "Hmm."

"This might have caused even more severe ramifications than we initially thought," he commented after a while. "I wonder if there were any more adverse reactions or if this is the worst of it."

"What Koichi means by me being sick is just a couple of colds and stuff," Koji answered, his voice as emotionless as he could make it.

"Still, that indicates your immune system is weakened," Alice pointed out.

"Right," Dolphin agreed. "You'll have to watch yourself around Jeri. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that these characteristics are what Jeri's targeting you for. Koichi could be a powerful weapon for good _or_ evil, and Koji can certainly turn the tide of a battle. The ability to bring people back from the dead means humans will be able to disregard all boundaries and invade all frontiers. Jeri would kill him for that."

"There's no way I'm letting her do that!" Koichi declared, his brotherly instincts taking over him completely.

"Neither will I," Alice calmly stated. "I promised myself when I started out that I wouldn't let anyone die. I'm not about to break that promise."

"Another danger is the fact that we don't know exactly what Jeri's planning," Dolphin added. "The D-Reaper is easy to figure out, but the human factor is always unpredictable. Where the D-Reaper may want to kill Koji to prevent his ability from allowing humans to expand their boundaries again, Jeri may think the opposite. She never liked killing, so perhaps she would use it differently so that she could bring back anyone who died. Can you imagine what would happen if an entire army—dead only five minutes ago—suddenly sprang to life and went back to killing?" He shook his head in disappointment. "It would be chaos."

"Which is exactly what the D-Reaper stands for," Alice informed. "While in this world, Jeri is taking up the name of Mishio—after her birth mother. But even with this obvious alias, she still evades us and is still very dangerous. You saw what she can do with the chaos. My entire shirt will be gone in a few hours. It can't act as well on humans because we're organic, but…"

"We understand," Koichi assured.

"You'd better," Alice replied seriously. "The D-Reaper is an enemy unlike anything you've faced. You've dealt with Lucemon's 'beautiful order.' Think of facing 'glorious chaos,' with the world covered entirely by red antimatter that can and will delete anything made of data. I've seen it, and the effects scarred us all forever."

"But then what do you need us for?" Koji questioned. "We can just avoid her until you stop her."

"Think about what you're saying," Dolphin instructed. "Can you really avoid her? She'll come at any time to ambush you. Can you avoid going to school, being with your family, spending time with your friends, or saving the world again if you have to? Can you dodge your responsibilities to yourself and to others just to keep from being killed? It's not possible. That causes chaos, and the D-Reaper inside of her feeds off of it. The feeling of being isolated will cause enough inside of you for her to find you, and then there's no escape."

"We need you both to help us stop her. She has limited amounts of power, but she does know how to detonate chaos in a way that won't cause it to be as widespread as the Tamers faced it. You saw the detonation at the store. It doesn't harm people very much because its power is still contained. But it does cause enough damage to an area. If she uses enough, it would outweigh a nuclear explosion." Alice's voice was grim, even more so than before.

"How are we supposed to stop her?" Koichi asked.

"You can't evolve," Dolphin pointed out, "and even if you could, the chaos would delete you easily in your Digimon forms. But I have obtained a couple of weapons that release an algorithm that will overload the D-Reaper until it dies from her mind. All courtesy of my old colleagues, the Monster Makers and Yamaki."

"But won't that algorithm overstrain her mind?" Koji checked.

"No," Alice replied. "It's specially designed by a man named Shibumi so that it will only affect anti-data. Jeri is organic, and if she went into the Digital World, she would be data. It couldn't harm her at all."

"These weapons Alice brought over from our old world," Dolphin added. "She has the only thing close to being deadly: a knife for just in case of emergency. Yours won't have quite as much of an effect. You all have a few electrodes that will attach to any part of her body. They send an electrical impulse through her nervous system as they—in a way—fry the D-Reaper's hold on her brain. The worst she'll experience is a loss of consciousness and guilt for a while, but that's a lot better than the alternative of killing her. In addition, all of your clothes will be protected by a network of algorithms that will neutralize chaos. It'll keep you from facing the same Alice did. The rest of her clothes will also have those algorithms."

"It sounds like we'll be mostly unarmed," Koji determined.

"Not entirely," Dolphin corrected. "You've both learned a lot from your fighting in the Digital World. You won't need deadly force like Alice does—she wasn't a Tamer, so she doesn't have much experience in this area. You can make do with whatever you find."

"We'll meet again sometime after school," Alice decided. "I'll contact you on where and when." She escorted them to the door and locked it behind them.

"This isn't going to be easy on them," Dolphin commented. "This isn't anything we had a right to ask them for."

"Who has the right to ask anyone for anything?" she answered, fingering a pewter cross at her neck. "Grandfather, I need to go play."

"Go right ahead, Alice. Hopefully it'll make us both feel better about this."

Alice entered her room and removed an old keyboard from a corner. She turned it on and made sure it was set to replicate the music of a piano. Slowly, she pressed the keys in a soft melody, trying to find comfort in the song. It was wrong to call on people to do this sort of thing, especially to call on children.

_Destiny,_ she thought as she continued playing. Destiny was cruel, all right. She always thought it was fun to play with humans' lives and watch them struggle in agony. Joy, sorrow, they were both the same to her—she couldn't feel them. It was the same as a tone-deaf person analyzing a piece of classical music. Allegros and crescendos would be mistaken for falling adagios. Adagios were allegros. Nothing was right. Everything was wrong. Order didn't exist. Chaos ruled.

"Destiny…" she murmured.

-------  
Jeri Katou stood atop the building overlooking the one that housed the McCoys. The Kimura-Minamoto twins were making a slow descent to ground level and would walk slowly to the train to home. It would be easy to assault them now, but that was not her plan at the moment. She would wait and watch them for now.

The younger of the twins was clearly tired for some reason. He placed his hand against a wall and tried to catch his breath while his brother stared at him in concern. He would not reveal that he felt sick, so he just shook his head and moved along. Jeri took note of these things with interest. She knew that the events to come would be even more taxing on those two than either Alice or her grandfather thought. And why?

"Destiny."

The one word ruled all. Destiny was their guiding force, and though it was possible to choose a way to change one's life, some things were just too far-gone. Some _people_ were just too far-gone.

"Destiny."

Piano music drifted from Alice's open window to reach her sharp ears. The purpose of the music was to relieve some of the chaos in the girl's heart. It was all meaningless in the end. If the chaos wanted to come, it would make it so that Destiny brought it to this world. But the music brought back some dear memories for the girl within the demon. Familiar faces flashed in front of her vision, familiar voices played in her ears, familiar events drifted through her mind…

_A red-haired girl with a fiery spirit and an often cold demeanor…_

_"I don't think fighting's fun anymore either, Jeri…"_

_A naïve boy with goggles whose dreams helped save the world…_

_"Leave Jeri alone and quit messing with her feelings!"_

_A noble lion Digimon who saw her true strength…_

_"A part of me will always be with you. Remember, you have a lion's heart…"_

"Leomon?" she voiced out of nowhere.

More memories arrived, this time by the thousands. It took all of her concentration to sift through them and find any that made sense…

_"I'm gonna save Jeri if it's the last thing I freakin' do!"_

_"Don't listen to that rag!"_

_"Jeri, what I mean is, can you ever forgive me?"_

_"I'd do anything to make you happy again…"_

"Impmon? Calumon?"

The being that she housed burned with in her skull, forcing her to grab her head and rock back and forth while sobbing in pain. Human-Jeri fought with D-Reaper-Jeri, both of whom wanted different things. Finally, a bit of human-Jeri won, and she leapt from the roof of the building, landing perfectly on the ground below. There was someone she needed to see at the moment, someone who may have had answers for her questions…

-------  
Koichi froze just outside the gate of the Minamoto home in Yokohama. In all of ten years, this was as close to the house as he had let himself come. The rest was a new frontier that he was afraid of experiencing, and it had haunted him for as long as he could remember.

"Koichi?" Koji asked. It was apparently his turn to be concerned.

"You can take it from here," he replied rather quickly. "After all, I don't want you thinking that I'm babying you or anything." His excuse soon faded when the door opened to reveal their father, Kousei Minamoto. It only took a second for the father and elder son to meet each other's eyes, but it took an even shorter time to intimidate father inside the house and son to lower his gaze to the sidewalk. If either had chanced to look, he would have seen a disappointed expression on Koji's face from the inability for either to face his fear of the other.

"Fine then, Koichi," Koji answered. "Tell Mom that I'll be there for dinner on Thursday."

"I will." His eyes were still focused on the ground.

"Should I hold on to her gift?"

"Probably. She'd just notice it too easily if I carried it in."

Koji figured this would be the only chance he'd have to introduce both his brother and his father, so he decided to take his chances. "Koichi…"

"Well, gotta go," the elder twin interrupted suddenly. "Have to finish the last of my homework before school tomorrow. See you later, Koji!" He ran off, a little too fast for Koji's taste.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Later." It was always "later" with his brother when it came to meeting their father. Koji had informed him numerous times that their father was not the cruel, hard being Koichi had feared in all of his nightmares. But each time he tried, Koichi brushed it off as easily as Koji himself would in the same situation. And he didn't even try talking to his father anymore about the subject; Kousei always found a way to change the subject or ignore it entirely.

Koji entered the house with a sigh and walked to the stairs to his room, half-determined to bottle in his frustration with all of his other feelings until the combined emotions spilled all around his fingers as he played his guitar. But after the Digital World, he was less inclined to do that. He felt like he had to even come close to telling someone, even if it was just going to amount to listening to advice he didn't need or ranting for a few minutes while someone silently overheard. So in that aspect, he was fortunate enough to bump into his stepmother, Satomi, along the walk from the front door to the staircase.

"You don't look so well," she observed. "Is everything all right?"

Satomi Minamoto was Koji's stepmother, but she wasn't at all trying to replace his birth mother—especially after the boy had come to know the woman who'd given him life. She had even released him from his promise to call her "Mom." In a way, she was almost like a sister to him—and given the small size difference between them, it wasn't hard to momentarily believe she was just an elder sister rather than a tall, strong mother. Her role for him was advisor and the listener that he needed just at this moment.

"Not really."

"Is it anything you want to talk about?"

Had Koji not been so wrapped up in negative feelings, he might have smiled. Satomi always was sure to ask if he wanted to talk about things just in case there was something he wanted or needed to handle on his own. Even his own brother didn't respect his privacy in _that_ way! It wasn't that Koji was ungrateful for his brother's help, or the help of the other DigiDestined, but there were times when he just wanted people to stop flinging themselves into his problems. So he nodded.

"What is it then?"

"It's Koichi and Dad again. I told you about the Digital World thing, right?" He hoped he had; he never needed to mention it before. If he was wrong in recalling it, he would have an even longer explanation than he wanted.

"Yes."

"Koichi was able to face all of his fears there, even manage to stand up to Cherubimon and reconcile with his being Duskmon. But he can't come near the house without shaking. And Dad—he's been sort of okay with me visiting Mom once in a while, but he hasn't even tried meeting Koichi. Each time I try to ask him if Koichi can come over, he figures out a way to say no without actually saying it. It's driving me crazy that they can't even look at each other."

"The past is always a difficult thing to face," Satomi explained. "Your father looks at Koichi and sees the mistake of keeping the truth of the divorce from you. Koichi looks at your father and sees the mistake of his ill-placed anger. They see a past they don't want to relive."

Koji nodded his comprehension. He didn't like the answer he got, but it was what he needed to hear. Why was it that the answers he wanted to hear were always withheld from him in order to incorporate them with answers he didn't want?

He suddenly began coughing again, nearly losing his balance from the force of the phlegm in his chest. Satomi looked at him anxiously.

"That sounds terrible," she determined. "I'll get you some cough syrup."

Koji wanted to say no. Satomi happened to be one of those people that believed the worse a medicine tasted, the more effective it was. With that in mind, she always managed to buy the most rancid cough syrups imaginable. Even Koji wasn't immune to shuddering when he took it. But he knew that his mother's birthday dinner was in a few days, and he didn't want to break his promise and be sick for it. When Satomi returned with a tablespoonful of syrup, he tried his hardest to drink it without vomiting.

After a successful attempt at downing the medicine without gagging, he placed the bag with his mother's coat in a corner of his room, promising himself to wrap it the first second he got. If Koichi didn't like it, it was too bad; he could just pay Koji back for the paper later. But when he got up, he heard a voice from the terrace window asking, "Why do you give up so much for a person you met not long ago?" He turned to see Jeri standing atop the balcony wall, watching him passively.

"What would it matter to you?"

"You tried to give your life for your unknown brother many times, even knowing that he tried to kill you before. Why would you do something like that?"

"Because he's my brother." It was the answer Takuya had hammered into him, forcing him to realize in the heat of battle that sometimes the only way to be family was to engage in the worst possible aspects of it, in his case, the fights to the death they'd had in the Digital World.

"And if he was not?"

"Then I would still help him."

"Why?"

There were two things currently running through Koji's head at the moment. The first, and most logical, was the question of "Why am I carrying on a civil conversation with someone who obviously wants to kill me?" and the second was "How can I explain the way we all were?" The Legendary Warriors had been incredibly close, a second family for them all. They lived for each other, and they died for each other. Though they would never say it, they all agreed that they would do that without a second thought. It was just the way things were.

He sighed and tried it as best as he could. "Because even if we weren't related by blood, we would still be family."

"Why is your family so important to you that you would give anything for it? Wouldn't it be easier for you to distance yourself from them?"

The words ignited a previously unseen rage within Koji's heart. How could she _dare_ tell him to become the person he once was?

"You apparently have no idea what it's like to experience true chaos. I am a younger brother who often must be the older, and when the older brother does act older, he sounds like a father. My father lied to me for ten years about my mother's death and my brother's existence, and my stepmother acts like she's my older sister. I don't even know what my real mother is like! And I don't have any idea what a real family's supposed to be like either. That's true chaos—when you yourself are caught up in it." He was not prepared for her answer.

"You would be surprised."

She jumped backwards from the terrace and seemed to disappear. Koji's expression became even more serious as he considered how easily she could have killed him if she wanted and how she chose just to talk. He decided that he would not mention Miss Jeri/Mishio's visit just yet to Koichi and Alice. He would wait for any more oddities from the young woman before doing anything about it.

-------  
Koichi sighed as he opened the door to his apartment and removed his shoes at the doorway. He took off his jacket and walked to the closet to deposit it.

"Koichi, you were out longer than I expected," his mother observed, walking in the kitchen to greet him. "Did you and Koji get into any trouble?"

Koichi forced a smile as he decided to bend the truth a little bit. Why was it that mothers always knew everything? "Not really, Mom. We just had to help a friend take care of a little problem. She then took us to meet her grandfather."

"Was it that Zoë girl you both met in the Digital World?" Hearing her mention the Digital World was an oddity in itself. The situations Koichi had described were too hard for her to admit having happened. Still, there was no denying it after having the chance to finally see her other son after so many years. But even though she had to believe everything that had happened truly existed, she didn't have to continually mention it. And Tomoko Kimura was a master at making certain events seem as though they'd never happened, such as her divorce and leaving behind one of her twin sons. Sometimes it seemed that Koichi was the only one who was immune to it.

Koichi shook his head. "Some girl from America, I think. At least, I think that's where her accent's from. Her name is Alice."

"I'm glad to know you both are making friends. I worry about you, Koichi. Even around your other friends, you seem a little distant."

"You don't have to worry about me," he assured. "Sometimes it's harder to keep up a friendship when you're not all in the same place all the time anymore. We just don't have as much of a chance to see each other." Wishing to change the subject, he glanced at the stove. "It's my night to cook dinner, so I'd better get started. Else we'll be eating late again."

The sudden, abrupt subject change didn't escape his mother. "Koichi, are you okay?"

"Of course, Mom. What could be wrong?"

"I don't know," she answered. "You seem a bit distracted."

"Just the normal things," he replied. "Oh, and just to let you know, Koji swears he's going to be here Thursday—no matter what. He's determined not to let anything stop him."

"Why would anything?"

Koichi shrugged slightly as he placed a pot of rice on the stove to boil. "I thought he might have had a cold or something, but he says he's all right. Just hope he tries to keep it that way this time. He's been sick so often… I keep wondering why. He won't admit that there's any problem, but…"

"Whatever problems Koji has, he'll solve them on his own," his mother explained. "You don't always have to interfere with his life when you try to be a good brother. Some things he just has to do alone." She then examined the now boiling pot. "And you'll want to stir that before it burns."

Koichi sighed again. "Yes, Mom." It wasn't right that Koji would continue to keep things to himself. They were brothers; they were supposed to trust each other with things like this. If something was wrong, he had to mention it. But then again, it was always Koichi who had denied having a problem. Koji, for the most part, shared any misgivings or problems with him. If he wasn't talking about something like this, it couldn't be a problem in his mind. But that still posed the question of whether or not it was a problem in actuality. Rather than answer his own questions, Koichi just turned the rice over and added a dash of seasoning before looking at a picture of his deceased grandmother.

"Grandma, when you told me I was a brother, you should have mentioned that the job wasn't going to be easy," he commented. "Koji's not the easiest person in the world to relate to. Other times, it's too easy to get in his head. And on top of that, Alice and Dolphin are practically telling me that we have to protect each other even more fiercely than in the Digital World in order to keep some crazed girl from either killing us or using us as her weapons. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do from here." There was no answer, but he didn't really expect it. From his belief of Buddhism, he believed that his grandmother would either attain nirvana or be reincarnated in another form. Because of that, he didn't entirely know what he was doing right then and there. From Koji, it would be less awkward, as he believed more in the existence of ancestral _kami_ due to being raised with both Buddhist and Shinto backgrounds. His personal belief was that the souls of the deceased were always protecting their loved ones on Earth. He'd offered that bit of comfort one of the times when Koichi was grieving his grandmother's death. It wasn't often that Koji got sentimental like that, so Koichi paid close attention to the words and didn't forget them. The idea wasn't too against his own personal belief system anyway; after his temporary death, he _had_ in a way protected Koji by handing over the Spirits of Darkness. So then why did he feel so silly doing this?

It didn't matter. He wouldn't get an answer because there was no answer that anyone else could give him. He'd have to figure it out on his own.

**Again, Mishio is not really the name of Jeri's real mom; nobody knows what that was. The scene with Alice playing the piano was inspired by R. Dorothy Wayneright from _Big O_—according to TV Tome, Alice is somewhat based on Dorothy, who often plays the piano. And for a short explanation on Shinto and Buddhism: Shinto is the belief in the kami—nature and ancestral gods—and the four main codes of conduct are respect for the family and tradition, respect for nature, cleanliness, and worship and honor for the kami. Buddhist beliefs are that cycles of reincarnation can be broken by attaining nirvana, spiritual enlightenment. There's no other way to really explain these without going into superfine detail, and there's just not enough room in the notes for that. If you have any more questions about either religion, run a search on them.**** I want to warn everyone in advance, any similarities between this and Raven Nightstrider's incredible "Half of My Soul" are purely coincidental and/or subconscious. The same goes for if anything sounds like it came from Lord Archive's Diaries Universe, which I have recently immersed myself in. Whatever similarities are not intentional unless I say so. This concentrates on Koichi, and everything that happens in his life at this point. Things will get more complicated later on, and certain things will come that will surprise some readers.**


	3. Fake Wings

_"Keep your eyes on me_  
_Now we're on the edge of hell  
__Dear my love, sweet morning light  
__Wait for me, you've much farther, too far."  
__.hack/SIGN: "Fake Wings"_

_Recommended Music:  
Dreams and reality—"Fake Wings," Fiction version  
Battle—"Cyber-slum"_  
_Guilt/Insight—"Valley of Mist"_

Fiction  
Track 03: "Fake Wings"

IceDevimon's dome held both Takuya and Koji captive as they pounded on the walls in a desperate attempt to escape. It wasn't like that was going to do any good; their D-Tectors were frozen and incapable of evolution. It was up to Koichi and the others to fight despite the looming probability that they didn't stand a chance. And yet, even though he could hear the enemy and his friends, Koichi could not see anyone other than Koji with him. It was such a strange and unusual concept for most people, but Koichi was entirely used to it in his nightmares, though he didn't know what it was supposed to mean.

Black ice sprouted from the ground in the dome. Koji shoved the unseen Takuya out of the way so that only one of them could be captured further. Both of them couldn't be taken or else everything they'd fought for would be in vain. Takuya had the best chance of fighting Cherubimon if they got out of this; better that Koji give himself up. The black ice wound itself around him, causing him to scream in agony. Koichi could recite this event while hanging upside down by his ankles and swinging as a pendulum over a pit of hungry crocodiles. He knew it by heart. But this was so much more different in a way—not so much that he could see than as he could feel. It was that strange connection between the twins that let them feel the other's pain. Koichi could feel what was going on with his brother almost as if it had happened to himself but without the physical ramifications. The dark ice binding was draining Koji somehow, and the elder brother could feel a fading sense within his mind that was slowly disappearing altogether. That hadn't happened in the real battle before.

Koichi suddenly wasn't in Digimon form. In the midst of an invisible battle, he walked over to the dome to check his brother's condition. Koji was unconscious, and his face was pale. The sounds of combat continued beyond his realm of understanding, playing out his memories on a stage with no actors. He was the lone one in the audience, and he was not there to be entertained.

Somehow, he found the ability to speak. Air moved past his vocal cords, generating sound—weak, dry, pathetic sound, but still sound nonetheless. "Koji?" His voice cracked like he hadn't had water for months. His entire mouth felt that way. Clearing his throat, he tried harder. "Koji?" Still not that great, but it was louder, and it was enough to cause his brother to stir. The captive in the ice bindings cracked open his eyes for an instant—just long enough to see Koichi standing just outside the dome. He then closed his eyes and vanished entirely into disintegrating Fractal Code.

The sound of incessant ringing from the alarm clock beside his bed woke Koichi out of his slumber. Where he'd normally hit the snooze button and place the pillow over his head for a few precious minutes of extra sleep, he sat up and turned it off before getting up to dress. After that dream, he did not want to return to his subconscious.

It wasn't unusual for Koichi to have nightmares. Given his former life as Duskmon, it was completely reasonable that he had them pretty frequently, each dream with its own intensity of fear or sorrow. It was perfectly normal for him to wake up and wipe the tears from his eyes as he did now. It was a little too often that he dreamed of something having gone wrong in the Digital World, resulting in Koji's death instead of his own. He never believed in these dreams or for once had to remind himself of reality; he was far too realistic for that. But these dreams, despite being only figments of his subconscious guilt and fear, were always very disturbing for him.

He yawned and stretched after changing out of his pajamas. It took only a second for him to run a comb through his tangled mess of black hair—why bother taking too much pride in it if it was just going to look windswept anyway? His brother cared a little more when it came to his own, but his hair was long and he kept a bandana over it anyway to prevent it from looking as bad as Koichi's. Once he was finished, he placed on a pair of socks and walked out into the kitchen to help his mom make a quick breakfast before school and work.

Most families had the traditional _miso_ soup, steamed rice, dried _nori_ seaweed, and pickles for breakfast. The Kimuras, however, seemed to be almost always short on money, so breakfast varied from white rice and an egg to chicken or beef ramen when money was really tight. This happened to be one of those days.

Koichi placed hot water into a cup of beef ramen while his mother did the same. She next added water to a cup of green tea leaves and, as always, asked her son if he'd like any. Most of the time, Koichi refused; green tea was not supposed to be sweetened, although his mother overlooked that custom, and his attempts to sweeten the tea resulted in a concoction that was mostly sugar, as though the overlooked tradition had exacted vengeance. But this morning, he wasn't feeling like his usual self after that nightmare, so he accepted and let his mother show him the correct ratio of sugar to tea that would keep him from tasting anything too bitter or too sweet.

_No one ever said I had a normal family,_ he reflected, thinking about how some of the other Legendary Warriors or even Alice McCoy might react to his morning. "Mom, if it's okay, after school can I go visit somewhere?" "Somewhere" was the proper way to refer to the Digital World around Tomoko Kimura.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?"

He nodded. "Koji called last night to say that the trains there are open for us again, and he knows how to find me if I'm in trouble." That was one of the benefits to the twins' emotional connection, balancing out the slight invasion of privacy: If one of the two was in trouble, the other knew where to look.

"Then I guess it's okay if you go. But don't be gone too long."

"I won't." _Even if I'm needed there for something, no one would hold me back, _he reasoned. _My mission's in the Human World, not the Digital World this time._

They finished their ramen and tea before gathering everything to go their separate ways. Koichi grabbed his backpack and walked off to school while waving goodbye to his mom, who drove off to work in the old station wagon she managed to keep after the divorce. The smiles they wore were false, painted on so that the other could not see the hidden worry. It was like this each day. But Koichi smiled on the inside as he watched his mother drive off; she would be so much happier after seeing the gift her sons had bought. It would remind her that she had both children to make her smile when she needed it.

-------  
There was very little Koichi could say about school that day other than it being the same old bore. As far as he could tell, both the students and teachers were looking forward to the three-day holiday New Year's would bring them the next month. Of course, with holidays so close, teachers piled on homework like the sun wasn't going to rise the next day. So knowing that he'd probably forget to do his work if he went to the Digital World first, he quickly went home and finished it before heading to the Shibuya station.

The elevator closed on him before he could get to it, but he knew this time to wait rather than take the stairs. He still shivered when he remembered his spill months before that had landed him in the hospital. He was just lucky to have survived without any physical ramifications—psychological ones were another story. He'd kill himself before admitting that the event caused him to have somewhat of a fear of heights.

By some all too convenient twist of fate, Koichi got on the elevator without anyone else accompanying him. The descent was slow at first, but it soon picked up speed in order to get him to the weakest point of the barrier between the Human and Digital Worlds. He gripped the rail tightly, having not expected the drop to affect his acrophobia like this. He was lucky that the ride didn't last very long, so when he got to the Trailmon, he had time to gather himself and think.

_It's strange that nobody tried to get on with me,_ he reflected. _Every other time we've tried to see if we could get here, someone's been around to keep us from getting on the elevator unnoticed. Does it mean that there's something I'm needed for?_

When he arrived at Flame Terminal, he saw that his fears were right. He _was _needed: to help Alice and Koji fend off Jeri Katou. Alice had her knife out, and Koji was defending himself with a broken pole-turned-_bokken_.

He literally jumped out of the train immediately and ran over to help them. "Why didn't you guys call me?" he asked.

"Didn't have time," Alice replied.

"We weren't exactly planning on coming here," Koji added. "She somehow pulled us out of the Human World."

Temporary fear gripped Koichi as he tried to recall what it was that had been said about the D-Reaper's effect on data. _She deletes it,_ he remembered in a sudden insane clarity of mind, _and Crusadermon said that I hadn't been real data, so anything like this wouldn't have hurt me._

"To let you know," Koji informed as if he'd heard Koichi's thoughts, "the chaos in her _is_ hurting us. You may want to help."

"Sorry," he apologized, grabbing one of the electrodes he'd been supplied with. Koji's had spilled all over the ground, uselessly emitting the algorithm meant to free Jeri from the D-Reaper's grip.

The brothers knew what to do as if they'd rehearsed it time and time again. Alice waited behind them, recognizing that if she tried to help them, she'd only be an inhibition. Koji's makeshift _bokken_ struck Jeri quickly and repeatedly, but never hard enough to hurt her. Koichi assisted with punches and kicks that left an uncomfortable burning sensation on his skin. Their attacks progressively grew more and more violent until Koji made a high swing with the improvised sword. As they expected, Jeri lifted her arms to defend herself, giving Koichi the perfect opportunity to attach the electrode to her wrist. Energy coursed through her, forcing her to scream as two halves of her consciousness were torn apart. The sound sent a cold shiver through the three, and they had to make themselves look at her.

"Takato, please help me," the still human part of Jeri pleaded.

"Takato's not here," Alice informed. "He couldn't come. I had to come in his place. I don't think you remember me too well. I'm Alice, the Messenger? The Tamers sent me a message to give to you. They just want you to go back to being yourself. They don't want you to be hurt—I had to promise Suzie that I wouldn't let you get hurt. They know you can't go home, but they want you to be able to make a new life, a happy life, here in this world. They miss you."

The message was just beginning to go through to Jeri when the D-Reaper half of her mind began to violently attack her psyche. Tears streamed down Jeri's face as her body acted against her will, tearing the painful electrode off of her arm and detonating another chaos bomb. The explosion threw the twins off the platform and onto the tracks just as a Trailmon was speeding their way.

"I'll lose them both, but that does not matter," Jeri thought aloud in the D-Reaper's emotionless voice. "Destiny will take care of them from here."

"How can you believe that?" Alice demanded, angry tears threatening to escape her eyes. "The Jeri Katou the Tamers knew would never believe that. You shame your mother by taking her name like this!"

"If you wish to save them, you had better choose which one to help," Jeri informed. Alice threw her knife in emotional rage, but it missed and fell with a clang to the floor.

On the tracks, Koichi was just managing to open his eyes. His entire body was racked with pain, an unwelcome reminder that he was still alive. But across from him, Koji was still unconscious, his Fractal Code debating whether or not to betray his condition. Koichi had a feeling his own data was fighting the same argument. He could hear the sounds of a Trailmon racing toward them, and helplessness nagged at him as he realized there was no way either he or Koji would be able to get out of the way in time.

"Alice, forget her!" Dolphin's familiar voice called from above. "Help me get the twins!"

Alice jumped down to the tracks, neglected tears staining her face. She held a rope that her grandfather had rigged to allow him to pull the children up.

"Koji's still out," Koichi warned, his consciousness beginning to slip.

"I know," she answered, tying the rope around his waist. She then hurried to Koji and lifted him away from the tracks while Dolphin quickly pulled Koichi to the platform. They were just in time; barely a second later, the Trailmon flew past without ever having suspected that there had been near-victims on the tracks.

Koichi could barely remember what happened next. He just knew somehow he'd ended up lying on his back, watching Jeri's human figure leap past from building to building. Somewhere in his muddled thoughts, he wondered how it was possible to fly without wings…

-------  
Jeri was breathing hard when she escaped Flame Terminal. The D-Reaper side of her and the human side of her were once again at war, and the D-Reaper was again using her greatest weapon against human-Jeri: the mind rape. Jeri found herself reliving her memories again, only now she was seeing her actions against other people and the consequences:

_"DigiModify! LadyDevimon activate!"_

_The blast Leomon released was incredible, wiping out Orochimon. She felt relieved at seeing what her partner could do, but then again, wasn't she the one that started the trouble in the first place? Orochimon had only been so powerful due to the data-filled milkshakes she kept feeding him…_

"No! I didn't mean it!" she cried.

_"Do it. Do it! I order you! Digivolve to Mega!" Takato ordered, all out of rage from Leomon's death._

_Fire encircled Guilmon in a warped evolution, transforming him into the deadly Megidramon. Both the innocent Guilmon and Takato were gone forever all because Jeri was too weak a Tamer to protect Leomon…_

"That's not true!" she denied.

_Her father jumped on top of the D-Reaper's tentacle, desperate to try and save his daughter, even if it meant his own death…_

"I didn't want to hurt anybody!" she screamed.

_Takato, Rika, Henry, Ryo, and Calumon all put their lives on the line to save _her_—not necessarily their world. They nearly died, and it was all her fault._

_And now, she had just thrown two young boys into the path of an oncoming train, knowing full well what the consequences would be._

Jeri sank to her knees as tears ultimately broke free from her. The Messenger was wrong. How could the others not want to hurt her if she had been hurting them so often?

-------  
Koichi opened his eyes to bright daylight and a warm sun. Someone had been kind enough to let him and Koji rest in a spare bedroom. He sat up to find that his pain had been greatly relieved and no permanent damage had befallen him. Nearby, his brother was just opening his eyes too.

"You're awake too," he observed without asking. "You feeling better?"

Koichi stood up and now felt the pain returning. He felt extremely dizzy as blood flowed away from his brain. "Depends on what you mean by better. What about you?"

"Mostly okay. Just incredibly tired. I keep falling asleep when I try to wake up."

"It's probably the medicine we had to give you to keep you both alive," Alice pointed out, walking into the room. She had tried to draw an expressionless mask over her face as Jeri did, but it didn't work as Koichi had seen the tears on her cheeks before. Now she just provided them each with a glass of water to combat the dehydration that was sure to come from being in the hot Flame Terminal.

"If you're tired, get some more rest," Koichi advised Koji. "It might help you feel better in time for Mom's birthday." Koji made a bit of a disgusted face at the reminder of his not feeling well, but he closed his eyes nonetheless. Koichi decided to take the opportunity to walk around and thank Dolphin for showing up in time.

The one-time Monster Maker was sitting in his wheelchair, examining the area of the chaos bomb. When he saw Koichi coming, he waved him over. "I've never seen anything like this," he admitted. "Chaos usually completely deletes any data it touches, but Jeri had such a firm hold over it that even a small amount could be deadly without deleting anything."

"It was still draining," Koichi informed, looking at his hands as if expecting to see the burns he'd felt. "Koji and I are still exhausted from the explosion, and when I had to hit Jeri, her skin was hot like an oven."

"The widespread chaos back home was too," Dolphin recollected. "After fighting it, I remember Ryo joking to Takato's cousin Kai that he didn't envy him for going back home to Okinawa, where he'd only experience more heat. I'd never seen so many kids willingly take off their jackets in the middle of a cold October just to feel the chilling air."

"Dolphin, if you don't mind my asking, why was Alice so upset when she saved us?" Koichi questioned. "Was it just her promise not to let anyone die?"

He sighed. "You know why she made that promise?" Koichi shook his head. "When Alice was little, both her mom and dad passed away. I've been raising her since she was ten. Her mother died from complications in childbirth, and her father died in a plane crash years later. The only people she'd known all her life were me and her dad; when he died, she was completely lost."

"That explains why she wears black," Koichi realized.

Dolphin nodded. "She took up the Gothic style soon after her father's death. Then, when she was twelve, the 'gods' of our Digital World, the Digimon Sovereign, called her as a Messenger to the Tamers. She was to accompany Dobermon, a Messenger who carried the power of biomerge digivolution—almost Spirit Evolution, but a combination of a human and Digimon rather than a human and Spirit—to allow the Tamers to fight the D-Reaper. Unfortunately, the only way to give the power to them was for Dobermon to sacrifice his body. Parts of his remaining data used to linger and follow Alice, but that all stopped a year ago, after the gates to the Digital World were temporarily sealed."

Koichi nodded his understanding, but there was still something that was bothering him. "I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but how did you end up in a wheelchair? And why hasn't the Digital World repaired your legs? I thought it would be able to do that."

"Traveling between disconnected worlds like yours and ours is even harder than it is to travel between connected ones like the Human and Digital Worlds. You need an anchor to make sure you can cross safely. Our veteran dimension-hopper, Ryo Akiyama, had firsthand knowledge about the dangers of traveling without help. He'd temporarily lost his memory once. When I volunteered to act as an anchor for Alice so she could safely pass over into this world, I was prepared for any psychological dangers, but I didn't think of any physical ones. I suffered extensive nerve damage to my legs, forcing me to be confined to a wheelchair. As for what the Digital World could do, I don't know. Some people have speculated that damaged data would repair itself, but that's certainly not true here. I think the only reason you had a false data form was because you had a purpose to fulfill. Either that or your brother provided enough of his own data for you to have a body."

"Is that why Koji kept getting extremely tired after battles?" he found himself asking. "He was always winded or hurt in places where he hadn't been hit, like something was tearing him apart inside. Could it have been that?"

"I don't know," Dolphin confessed. "Whatever was wrong may have a connection to you, but I don't think that's it. But we'll probably learn with time."

Unintentionally, Koichi shivered. "With time" typically wasn't a good omen. In his experience, it meant that a something terrible was coming very soon.

_Bokken: a wooden sword (not a bamboo one) used for kendo. Rurouni Kenshin fans may notice that Kaoru Kamiya uses a bokken._

**Thanks to Lord Archive's "War Diaries—Adventures Zero-Three," I finally figured out what the names are for the wooden and bamboo kendo swords (_bokken_ and _shinnai_ respectively). Before anyone jumps up and screams, "_CCS_!" the idea of the dreams isn't from that. It's just something that I love to write. Also, to those people screaming, "Half of My Soul!" you can tell that these dreams aren't copied from that. Kouichi in "Half of My Soul" by Raven Nightstrider believed that his dreams were some kind of omen. In this fic, he doesn't. They're just dreams he's always going to have because of his guilt. The idea of the Kimuras being short on money a lot just stems from the situations I've seen in the show: Koichi didn't have a cell phone, his mom was always overworked, and it seemed that there was some kind of jealousy Koichi had over Koji. I'm one of those fanfiction authors that writes Koichi in as being less economically privileged than Koji, but not exactly poor. ****The ramen thing? ****It was actually a way of describing what happens when you're down on the last bit of the paycheck before the next one. My family ends up eating leftovers for dinner. Leftovers really aren't something to be expected in Japan, so I described it by using ramen.**** And New Year's is a big holiday in Japan, so it does end up being a three-day holiday. I apologize if this chapter and its preceding ones were a bit boring, but they're building up to action later on. Things will get better, I promise. Anyway, you all know what to do now and how to do it. Till the next!**


	4. Fiction

_"I hear long forgotten broken toys_  
_Telling me ancient tales of a boy  
__I will sing of them in my fairytale."  
__Original: "Fiction"_

_Recommended Music:  
__Nightmare—"Fear"  
__Breakfast/Mind Rape—"Fiction"  
__Brothers—"Echoes"  
__Nighttime rendezvous—"Distrust"_

Fiction  
Track 04: "Fiction"

Koichi was once again the terrifying Duskmon, ready to eliminate the so-called "Legendary Warriors." The Duskmon part of his brain that Cherubimon controlled questioned how any people so weak could even dare to take that name, but the part of him that knew he was dreaming frantically tried to wake. When desperation proved fruitless, he carefully calmed himself and took deep breaths in the hopes that he'd leave the nightmare. All his attempts were in vain, and his body continued to act against him, attacking relentlessly but logically at his enemies.

The worst part of it all was that he _knew _this battle. It was one that was half a blessing but mostly a curse. While it was true that the events of this episode had first caused him to question himself, what happened was still painful for both him and his brother to remember. Koichi could feel himself shaking as he lifted his right sword, slashing it in Agunimon's direction. Once again, the other DigiDestined were not present, save for Koji. It was an amazing feat that Koichi's body had kept its nerve while he hadn't and that he hadn't vomited/wet himself when he cut through his brother. He heard everyone calling out Koji's name, but there was no one there to pick him off the ground. From there, the actual turn of events changed from Agunimon's apology and Koichi's bout of insanity to what would have happened had the others been gone. Still in Duskmon's body, Koichi lifted his brother's limp body from the ground and cradled him gently.

"Koji?" he called in the same weak voice from all of his nightmares. His twin stirred a little at the sound of his name. "Koji, are you okay?" It was a silly question; of course he wasn't—he'd just been slashed through with a freakin' sword! his mind screamed. But it was enough to get the boy to open his eyes and stare up at the person holding him. "Koji, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you…" Koji just managed to nod in comprehension before closing his eyes again. Fractal Code built around him and disintegrated, flying away from his hands. Koichi was no longer in his corrupted Digimon form—he was thankful for that. But he was not in any way relieved that he was no longer carrying a person he loved greatly.

The door to his bedroom opened, waking him from yet another nightmare. He sat up to see his mother looking at him in concern.

"Are you all right?" she checked. "Your eyes are red, and it looks like you've been crying."

"Nothing," he assured. "Just a nightmare."

"All right then, if you're sure you're okay. Koji just called. He said that your friend Alice is coming over in a bit for inspection?"

"Don't worry, Mom. She just needs to look through our clothes."

"Whatever for?"

"She's connected to _that place_—" He correctly avoided mentioning the Digital World—"and she wants to put something in our clothes that will protect us if we ever have to go back."

His mother smiled. "That's a good idea. I'm glad to see there are people trying to help keep you two safe. Now, you'd better get dressed. I'm starting breakfast now. Your friend is invited to stay if she wants."

"I'll let her know."

She closed the door, leaving him alone to change. As he did, he took the time to muse about his nightmares. Koji died in each one, but not before he opened his eyes one last time to see his brother nearby. Koichi held an inward shudder as he remembered the paleness of his brother's face every time. Not even Alice was that white. But there was still something about those dreams that bothered him, something he just couldn't figure out for the life of him.

_Since when did I go from being a helpless observer to the killer? _he asked himself. _What's the reasoning behind it? What's my subconscious trying to tell me?_ Following his time as Duskmon, he'd come to believe that his dreams were subconscious messages from his soul to his mind, telling him what he needed to do or informing him of some dormant guilt. Was he feeling guilty over his past actions?

_But I've completely forgiven myself for all that, _he argued. _There's no reason I should still be feeling guilty. _There was another knock at the door. "Come on in," he informed.

Alice opened the door and entered, casually walking past him to his closet. He felt like a complete idiot as he stood next to his bed, watching her go through his wardrobe. She quickly moved things past, attaching the algorithm barriers to the necklines of each of his shirts before she finally turned around to him in mild annoyance.

"For a Warrior of Darkness, you really don't have any black clothes," she noted. Had he not known of her tragic history, he would probably have been angry with her; instead, he shrugged innocently. For some reason, after her comment, he took notice that she was not dressed in her usual black, but rather a gray school uniform with a dark brown skirt. "I'll have to take you shopping after school."

"What for?"

"There will be times when we have to go out at night," she explained. "Black clothes are the best disguise, both in the Digital World and here. Your brother had a few pairs—he'll probably let you borrow some if necessary."

"No, it's okay," he assured. "My mom just got her paycheck, so I can borrow some money and pick something up."

Alice shook her head. "I need to go with you. There are certain materials the algorithm won't travel through. That's why I had to check yours and Koji's clothes rather than just tell you that you needed black."

Koichi's mother popped her head in the door and informed, "Breakfast is ready, Koichi. You're invited to have some if you want, Alice."

"No thank you," she answered, "I really should be…"

"Please," Koichi insisted. He felt that he had to make up for knowing her secret. "You should have time before school. We'd be honored."

Knowing that she couldn't refuse without the possibility of dishonoring the family, the McCoy girl accepted and went out to sit before a bowl of white rice, a fried egg, some baked fish sections, _miso_ soup, _nori_, and a cup of green tea. Where she was recovering from the culture shock, Koichi stared at the food in surprise for a completely different reason. Since when could they afford such a meal when they hadn't even gone food shopping yet? But Ms. Kimura simply replied, "I'm allowed to celebrate like this on my birthday, right? Now, aren't you going to say anything? Both Koji and Alice wished me a happy birthday before you did."

"Happy birthday, Mom." His voice was a bit flat with shock. There was no way they could have the budget for a large breakfast like this; just a few days ago, they had been eating ramen out of the microwave. "Were you saving up for all of this?"

"Actually," Alice answered, "I gave her the money. I wanted to give her something since I was going to be working closely with you and Koji. I didn't feel right about being the only one who didn't give her something for her birthday."

"Is there something wrong, Alice?" Ms. Kimura asked. "You haven't touched anything."

"I'm not sure if there are any customs for eating," she admitted. "I don't really know any customs here. I'm not very used to the Japanese culture, and most of what my grandfather and I make for breakfast is instant oatmeal."

"You don't need to worry about any special manners here," the matriarch assured. "You'll learn them soon enough. You just enjoy yourself now."

The girl smiled slightly. "Thank you."

Her etiquette was a bit shaky, but it didn't matter at all. Koichi was still a bit confused as to how all of this had come about: Alice had been a stranger only a few days ago, and she was now eating at his table as a good friend. And later, there would be more evidence to the changes that had occurred; for the first time in perhaps ten years, both Koji, Koichi, and their mother would be celebrating the same day together. Things were still changing with the arrival of Jeri and this new mission that required the twins to take up the job of Messengers, people who had to save the worlds without any abilities that aided Tamers or Legendary Warriors. He would have to adjust to these changes just as he had with those before. But a fear lingered inside him, whispering that the next changes to come would not be easy to accept.

Little did he know that someone outside was watching every bit of this with the slightest tears in her eyes. She watched as the three stepped out of the apartment and split into different directions: Ms. Kimura to her car, Koichi to his elementary school, and Alice to her middle school. Jeri watched it all with a sadness that the D-Reaper couldn't delete, a sadness that had started this whole mess to begin with. Finally, like a foolish little angel, she leapt from building to building, flying without wings to whatever her destination would be.

-------  
It was much later when she finally decided where she wanted to go. She stood on a tree branch outside an elementary school in Yokohama, watching as a student slept in the clinic. There was no way she could get inside as long as the nurse was watching, so she patiently waited for a distraction to come along. The student wouldn't be leaving.

When the opportunity came, Jeri came in through the window and stood over her sleeping victim. Koji Minamoto wore the algorithm barrier that protected him from the chaos, but Jeri didn't want to kill him—that was the D-Reaper's urge, and she was currently suppressed for the most part. The power was still in her body, though, and she decided to put that to her advantage. She placed a cold palm on his forehead, and he automatically pulled back from the feel of it. No doubt he was suddenly dreaming that a corpse had touched him. But this did not deter her from her goal; she remained fixated on it while the mostly dormant D-Reaper was encouraged at what effects the mind rape would create.

"Initiating memory scan," Jeri/D-Reaper's blank voice informed. "Subject: Minamoto, Koji."

The little she knew about him already was utterly illogical without knowledge of his deep past. She began with memories he didn't even know he still had, from his infancy to his conscious recollections in later years. All of these memories came with such speed and intensity that he was sweating and straining for breath while she invaded the deepest reaches of his mind. Many of these were painful, causing the boy to struggle frantically in bed, tied down by sorrow and fear. But finally Jeri reached the most recent additions to his brain, memories that forced a sudden calm on Koji that eased him back into a generally peaceful slumber.

_A circle of five children holding hands, united as one for a common goal…_

_A sad farewell to his other self, but with the hope of a reunion someday…_

_A tear to resurrect a brother and more to celebrate a happy ending…_

_A surprise bouquet of roses for a stepmother that released him from a promise he couldn't keep…_

_A fulfilled promise to see the mother he now had the chance to know…_

_A future he helped create, in which he would no longer be alone…_

Jeri pulled back her hand in confusion. It was understandable that the D-Reaper couldn't comprehend the shifting emotions and the changes in opinion, but it was disturbing if the human she inhabited didn't understand. How was it possible for a person to go through such dynamic transformations in only one year? It should have been impossible for strong hatreds to become such firm loves.

_"That's true chaos—when you yourself are caught up in it."_ He'd warned her before about this. Things like this _were _always too difficult for the D-Reaper to decipher. She still had no idea what it was that made the Tamers willingly risk their lives for Jeri (and later for Calumon and Beelzemon as well) or what it was that made Koji cry with such emotion that his own tears returned life to his dead brother.

She pulled back even further, stepping away from the bed and barely even daring to look at the now tranquil sleeper. Color returned to her face and life to her eyes. Though her thought processes were corrupted still by the D-Reaper's influence, she was once again Jeri Katou, the little girl with a lion's heart.

"Could he be able to…?" she began, inspiration striking her. There was possibly a chance of undoing all the damage that had been done, and the key to it was asleep nearby. She was just about to try and wake him when the sound of the returning nurse reached her field of hearing. Her sudden epiphany would have to wait for now. But that didn't mean the D-Reaper had to kill her burst of excitement. As she jumped across rooftops with the agility granted to her by her alter, she noticed for the first time the exhilaration of half-flying and half-falling through the air, always escaping the harsh confines of gravity. For the first time in months, a large smile spread across her face and elation danced in her eyes.

-------  
Even though he only had a few months of testimony to support it, Koichi knew that Koji would never intentionally break a promise to anyone. He'd been to the gates of Hell and beyond just to keep those promises, even when he didn't want to make them. And when it came to his family, he wouldn't let even Lucemon stand in his way. So when he didn't show up at the apartment at the time they'd agreed upon, Koichi got worried. He'd had a terrible headache earlier—even worse than the one he had after smashing his head on the concrete floor of the Shibuya train station—that had to have been an indication that something had happened to his brother. But that feeling had faded, leaving him with no evidence other than a broken promise to indicate that something was wrong.

They were halfway through dinner when Koji finally appeared, but he was in such a condition that Koichi wasn't sure he wanted to ask what had made him late. He was pale, and a latent fear was present in his eyes. Koichi had never seen him like this.

"Sorry I'm late," Koji apologized, saving Koichi the trouble of asking what was wrong. "I had detention and then I fell asleep when I got home. Dad barely woke me up in time. I'm sorry."

"It's all right," his mother assured. "We're just glad you're here."

Koichi watched his brother carefully the rest of the evening. He seemed to have to force himself to eat, and despite everything, he still looked very tired. But it wasn't until they'd finished eating that he had a chance to ask what was wrong. Their mother had just opened her gift and was trying it on in her room, giving Koichi the perfect opportunity to talk to Koji without either of them feeling as though they needed to hold back the truth. He started washing the dishes, handing them to Koji to dry, when he finally asked, "What's really wrong with you? You look awful."

"I'm exhausted—I've been this way for days now. But today, every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing painful memories."

"How painful?"

"The destruction of both worlds, Lucemon's rebirth, when he took your Fractal Code…I'm even dreaming about the divorce, and we were way too young to remember it."

Koichi sobered even more. It seemed he and his brother had a bit more in common than they'd prefer to admit. "I know what you mean. I've been having nightmares myself. But mine are all 'what ifs' that could have happened in the Digital World. I'm not bothered so much by my memories."

"Neither was I until this afternoon."

"This afternoon?" Koichi repeated. "I thought these happened during the night. Is this why you had detention?"

A faint trace of pink crept along Koji's face. "Yeah. I fell asleep in class. My English teacher signed the detention form, then sent me to the clinic to rest. I guess she could see that I wasn't feeling well."

"It's nothing to worry about," his brother reassured him. "This kind of thing is bound to happen sooner or later."

"It never happened to me. I don't know what it is that's making me so sick and tired, but I want it to pass quickly. I hate being like this." He stared at the bowl he was currently drying. His reflection was caught in the glass, showing him an eleven-year-old boy with heavily lidded eyes that were filled with uncertainty. But when he looked up to see his brother, he could see that they truly _were_ twins: Koichi too had tired, hesitant eyes, and lack of proper sleep definitely showed its mark on him. Just seeing that much made them both feel a little better. They'd sacrificed too much just to give into fears and doubts. Things were bound to get better—they _had _to be.

The phone suddenly rang, surprising them both. Koichi picked up the receiver and responded in a few one-word answers before hanging up and informing Koji, "Alice called. We have to head to a park in Shinjuku—she'll tell us which one. Apparently, Jeri's been seen there. You can borrow some of my clothes for camouflage."

"I didn't think you passed inspection."

This time, the pink color crept along Koichi's face. "She had to take me shopping after school. She threw the clothes in my arms. It was a little embarrassing." But before his brother could get any more amusement out of this situation than he already was, he decided, "We'd better tell Mom before we go."

-------  
Alice was positioned in a thicket of trees, staring at something through night-vision goggles when the twins arrived. As if she'd known they were there the whole time, she put a finger to her lips as an order to keep quiet.

"She's standing on top of the slide," she whispered, handing over the goggles so that the boys could see. Just as she said, Jeri stood atop the slide, the cold autumn breeze tugging at the hem of her skirt and tousling her hair. She was just staring into space, seemingly waiting for something to happen or for someone to come.

"Should we go over?" Koichi questioned.

Alice pursed her lips. "I guess so. Just be ready for anything."

They tried not to make any sound as they crept through the dead bushes, but the resting wood betrayed their position as though it would make spring come again to return life to the park. Still though, Jeri did not move or react in any way. It was only the wisps of breath made visible by the cold night and few park lights that indicated any life in the girl.

Everything that occurred after that point seemed to have been planned, predestined by some force beyond their knowledge or understanding, perhaps by the D-Reaper or perhaps by Jeri. The bare branches of the bushes grabbed Koji's shoelaces, and the more he tried to slip out of the trap, the more tightly wound in it he found himself. Alice and Koichi turned back to help him, but he urged them forward silently. Two Messengers could take care of this just as well as three.

They crept up to Jeri, Alice with her knife ready if need be and Koichi with the anti-chaos electrodes in each hand. Jeri seemed entirely oblivious to it all as they cut off the end of the slide and the bottom of the ladder. But still trapped in the bushes, Koji was suspicious. There was no way she would just give up right then and there. It was then that something she held caught his eye, and he had a sickening feeling that he knew what it was.

"Get away! She has a chaos bomb!"

The bomb detonated, sending Alice and Koichi flying several feet before they fell to the ground unconscious. Unable to disentangle his shoelaces from the branches, Koji attempted to slip his feet out of his sneakers, only to discover that his feet had chosen that inappropriate moment to grow into the shoes. Jeri leapt down from the slide and walked toward him with all the maddening steadiness of a killer in a horror movie about to act upon the helpless victim. But Koji wouldn't let himself die without trying something to get free. He pulled at the branches in an attempt to snap them, but they were amazingly strong. Was this the D-Reaper's doing? Dolphin had said that she couldn't delete anything organic, so had she found a way to make it stronger? She certainly seemed to have done so with Jeri, so anything was plausible when it came to plant life.

Jeri stopped right in front of him, her face just inches away from his. Just his being in her presence brought back the rapid-fire images of his memory, putting him into a worse state of fear than he'd been in before. She reached out for him, but he pulled back violently and fell into the tight grip of the bush. Now he had no escape.

Rather than hurting him in any way, Jeri placed one of her cold, corpse-like hands on his forehead, ending the mind rape she'd neglected to terminate earlier. Koji shook a bit until his body and mind settled into serenity. Jeri took his hand and helped him into a standing position, surprising him far more than anything else had since he'd come to meet her and Alice. But there were even more surprises in store for him when she spoke:

"I'm sorry for doing that to you." Her voice held actual emotion and true remorse. Furthermore, when he looked at her eyes, he could see that they were no longer befitting those of a dead woman. "I just wanted to know what it was that made you sacrifice so much. What I found was disturbing even for me.

"You and I aren't that much different. Both of us have losses that we couldn't recover from, but my losses are more complete. I lost my partner, my mother, and everyone else I cared about. Mama died when I was five, so I don't really remember her. Daddy raised me since then."

"What does this have to do with me?" Koji asked. The answer came, but not in the form he expected.

"My daddy knew he couldn't do the job alone," she continued as though she'd never been interrupted, "so he remarried a few years later. I had a new mother, one I didn't want. I was supposed to be happy, but I couldn't be. Daddy wanted me to accept my stepmother, but I just couldn't." Koji stared at her, unable to believe what he was hearing. This story was his own, just told a little differently. "I never did, and I don't know if I ever can. She's not my mother, and she can't even pretend to be."

"Why are you doing this?" he demanded, his voice shaking. "Why are you making me go through all this?"

She stepped back a few inches. "I'm sorry. I thought you would understand better if I told you, if I showed you how we're the same. I didn't mean to remind you of the pain; I'm sorry."

"What do you want?"

"You were able to bring your brother back from death, right?" He nodded; there was no use in denying it anyway. "Could you please use that ability again? I'd like to see my mother, even if it's just for a little while. Maybe, if I could have the chance to say goodbye, the D-Reaper wouldn't be able to hold onto me like she does. You, your brother, and the Messenger wouldn't have to worry about fighting me anymore. It would all be over."

Though his face still held some of his fear and apprehension, his voice responded sincerely to her request. "It was an accident that time. Even if I knew how I did it, I don't think I'd have the strength to bring back anyone who's been dead for so long. I was severely drained after I woke Koichi, and he'd only been gone for a few minutes."

"I see," she answered. "I couldn't ask you to do it if it might kill you in the end. Another death on my conscience is the last thing I want. I'm sorry for troubling you."

Koichi, meanwhile, was recovering consciousness only a few feet away while Alice rubbed her aching head. Remembering that his brother had tried to warn them of the danger, he searched the darkness with bleary eyes in the hopes of finding him. He blinked a few times to clear his vision, and once he could see, he noticed how dangerously close Jeri was to Koji. "Koji, run, now!"

The shout startled them, and Jeri took it as her cue to leave. She leapt into the trees and soared from one to another, leaving the three Messengers behind on the ground. The bushes seemed to release their insane hold on Koji while Alice and Koichi ran over to be sure he was all right.

"You were lucky," Alice determined when they found nothing wrong with him. "Even with the algorithm barrier, Jeri could have caused some significant damage."

"She did earlier," he confessed, going into detail of the sudden burst of memories he'd experienced that afternoon. "And it happened again when she came near me."

"What happened after that?" Koichi asked.

"She ended it." They stared at him blankly. "There's still enough humanity in her that she could decide that on her own."

"Still, I don't think it's a good idea for you to go on any more missions like this," Alice decided. "Jeri may have responded to you in a way that she couldn't for even Takato and Rika, but that might make the D-Reaper even more determined to eliminate you as an obstacle. It'll be best for you to keep away from her as much as possible."

Koji agreed without argument. What he'd learned that night was enough to keep him from wanting to go into this any further. It was distressing to think that he could have gone down the same road as Jeri had things been a little different in his life. But he could not tell Koichi that at the moment; it was something he'd have to use on his own to find a way to return Jeri to her normal self. And it couldn't be too far off. She was able to take complete control that day. As long as she could do that, there was a chance. That was as much as Koichi and Alice would be allowed to know. The rest was too private, and he doubted that even he'd been meant to see when she took leave with tears sliding down her cheeks.

**Parts of this are starting to sound like _Witch Hunter Robin, _and I apologize. ****The term "mind rape" came from _Evangelion_, noted by Chris McFeely in his Digimon Encyclopedia as being similar to the D-Reaper's treatment of Takato and Jeri. If anyone's questioning why they have night vision goggles, remember that Hypnos sent Alice and Dolphin to this world; it's not like Yamaki and the Monster Makers would let them go without equipment that could possibly prove useful. And keep in mind Alice's words about not knowing anything about Japanese customs; it's mentioned later on with an interesting turn of events. ****Till the next!**


	5. Vanity

_"Won't you feel my gentle emotion?_  
_Let us live in peace with conviction  
__If you're here, please hold me."  
__Original: "Vanity" _

_Recommended Music:  
__Disturbing thoughts—"Labyrinth"  
__A sleep like death/Satomi—"Das Wandern"  
__Surprise attack/Cross—"Secret Project"  
__Talk with Alice—"In Your Mind"_

Fiction  
Track 05: "Vanity"

Koichi's patience with his recurring nightmares had, by now, worn very, very thin. Any thinner and it would have been transparent. He consciously knew that his actions as Duskmon were entirely out of his control and that even if anything had gone the way it did in his dreams—which it hadn't—Koji would not harbor any ill will toward him. And he himself had made peace with his past and been done with it.

_But then why won't these end?_ he demanded of himself.__

This time, he and Koji were actually alone. They were inside the world of darkness in Sakkakumon's center sphere, cut off from anyone that could help. He was Duskmon, as he typically was in his warped subconscious, and he held Koji by his collar, demanding to know of his past. But instead of waiting for a response, he forced the memories from his brother. Shadows enveloped Koji, painfully ripping his sad memories from him so that Koichi could see them.

"Get out of my head, Duskmon," Koji gasped after a while. "Leave my memories alone!"

"Silence!" Koichi could barely believe that the harsh voice was his own. He could never sound so unfeeling toward his brother, not after what they'd been through! And yet he realized that this was the first time in a dream where Koji had spoken and the first time in which he himself spoke during battle. That somehow made it feel a lot more unsettling. It was bad enough remembering what he had _done_ as Duskmon, but what remembering he had _said_… It brought the dreams a little too close to reality.

Under any other circumstances, Koichi would have been exasperated by the redundant images of things that could have gone wrong. But the memories that came to him were not the same he'd seen in the sphere. Instead, he was faced with the images he'd created from hearing of Koji's experience with Jeri's mind rape. And because he was feeling everything the way Koji had, he felt the intense fear and sorrow that nearly killed him as he'd slept in the school clinic. He sensed the overwhelming fright that caused him to fall back into the death grip of the seemingly possessed bushes. He suffered the terrifying sensation of Jeri's almost dead hands against his forehead both times, feeling as though life was draining out of him from the terror.

The experience was bad enough for Koichi, but Koji took it even worse. This was no "what if" that he was used to; this was something he just couldn't describe. It was real and yet it was not real. The reemergence of the memories incited the same panic in Koji that could have gotten him killed back at school if not for the more reassuring memories of the Digital World and his friends and family. This time, he didn't have them to help. He didn't have anyone to help him.

His body became limp in Koichi's hold. His head fell forward to be obscured from view, but not before Koichi saw fresh tracks of tears streaming down his cheeks. And then he was gone, just as always in these nightmares, fading into memory himself.

Koichi sat up in bed, feeling no tears on his face this time. This dream had been more disturbing than frightening for a change. But it did leave him with a sense of duty that he had to fulfill. So he pulled on some clothes and quickly ate breakfast to his mother's surprise.

"You're up earlier than usual today, Koichi," she noticed. "Is something the matter?"

"Just a weird dream. Reminded me of something I have to do. Before school, I want to check up on Koji if it's okay."

"Of course it is. But why the rush?"

"He had a bad experience last night. He said he was fine, but from my experience, 'fine' means anything from 'relatively okay' to 'mortally scarred.' He usually doesn't want to talk about this stuff, but if I let him know it was bothering me, he might open up."

Ms. Kimura smiled at her son's willingness to help his newfound brother. "That's sweet. I can drive you there if you want."

The thought of both of his parents' meeting crossed his mind, forcing him to put his rice bowl and chopsticks all as part of the attempt to keep his food down. He had a hard enough time trying to surpass his fear of his father alone; having his mother there would make it even worse. "Don't worry, Mom. I'll be fine on my own. And Koji may react better if it's just me he's talking to."

"All right," she agreed. "But if there's a problem with him, let me know. I might be able to help too."

"Okay, Mom."

His uneasiness persisted as he took his book bag and pulled on his sneakers before walking out the door. He wasn't entirely sure if it wasn't a deliberate action by his body that had him walking more slowly than he'd ever done in his eleven years. It was only his concern for Koji that kept his legs moving at all.

Many forced movements to his stubborn (yet perhaps justly so) muscles and a train ride brought Koichi finally to his brother's neighborhood in Yokohama. He wasn't dazzled by the homes that were better looking than those he was used to because he knew that in reality, Koji wasn't rich. He was just in an upper portion of the middle class while Koichi lived in a lower portion. That was all. Their father wasn't a high-powered attorney, but one who fought for those who couldn't always pay the higher prices. There were even times when he refused to accept any payment at all, and that had earned him an iota of respect in Koichi's eyes. He was still deathly afraid of him, but he could at least respect him.

A petite woman with glasses emerged from the Minamoto home, half-dragging a stubborn dog. Koichi saw them and froze in place immediately. The woman—Satomi, he realized—pulled the dog along as it tried to reenter the house.

"You're not going back in there," she stated firmly. When she finally got the animal under control, she looked up to see her unexpected guest. The dog also noticed and began barking and fighting to get closer. "Akemi, settle down!" she ordered before addressing Koichi. "You're Koichi, right? I see you every once in a while when you and Koji visit each other." The dog continued barking and inched closer to Koichi, who took a nervous step back. "Don't worry about her. She's harmless, just very, very friendly. Koji's upstairs in his room if you want to see him. It's the first room on the right."

"Thank you," he managed to reply, quickly entering the house, removing his shoes, and heading in the specified direction.

"But wait a second!" she called back.

He was already up the stairwell when she called. All of his life, he had been unnerved by dogs. It wasn't so much that he was actually afraid of them, but he wasn't on very good terms with pets for the most part. The only thing he had wanted to do at that moment was to get away from that one.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he turned to the right to find his brother's bedroom. He knocked and received no answer. A bit concerned, he opened the door. From there, he had to fight every surging memory of his constant nightmares just so that he could see the situation clearly. Koji lay in bed, pale from illness and troubled sleep. He was not dead. His position in bed was twisted, supporting the notion that he'd had a rough night. A heavy blanket was almost over his head while his other sheets were wound around him. His face was expressionless, at least, giving Koichi some relief at seeing that his brother had finally attained peace of mind.

"I'm sorry; I tried to warn you," Satomi whispered from behind, reaching in front of Koichi to close the door. "He didn't sleep much last night until I gave him some nighttime cough medicine, and even then, he was still up. Did something happen last night that caused this?"

Koichi looked down in semi-guilt. This time, his nightmare had been subconsciously informing him that he should have given his brother more support the night before. "Yeah. He just had sudden terrible déjà vu."

"You don't have to bend the truth with me," she informed, causing him to look up in surprise. She regarded him with a small smile. "I know all about that strange Digital World. I'm probably the only person you'll meet who can accept the truth about it readily. And what I can tell from Koji's condition is that it was caused by something from the Digital World. Am I right?"

"In a way, yes," Koichi admitted. "He and I are trying to help our friend Alice stop a girl named Jeri, who was possessed by something from the Digital World. Jeri made Koji relive his memories, and I think it could have killed him if he didn't have the more positive memories of his time in the Digital World."

Satomi averted her gaze to the closed door. "Then I'm glad he has you to depend on. He's gone for so long without asking for anyone to help him. His father—_your_ father—and I were always so worried that he would go forever not trusting anyone."

A wry smile decided to appear on Koichi's face. "That's Koji all right—never wants anyone to hold his hand and guide him."

"At least things have changed for the better," Satomi commented. "Well then, I've probably kept you up here for too long. Don't worry too much about Koji; I'm staying behind from school to take care of him."

"Are you a teacher?" Koichi asked.

"No, I'm a student. I'm back in college, trying to earn a higher degree. I don't usually take off when Koji's sick—Kousei does out of habit from raising him alone for so long. I decided to take off today because I don't want him to miss too much work. It would be unfair. Now, anyway, I'm sorry that I can't drive you to school, but I'm afraid to leave Koji home alone when he's in this state. Other times, I'd be fine with it, but he's just too sick right now."

"It's all right," he assured. "I'm a little early for school anyway. I'll still be there on time if I walk."

To Koichi's surprise, Satomi hugged him briefly before sending him on his way with the comment "Thank you for taking care of your brother. I hope you know just how important he is." He was a bit puzzled at this, but he threw back a quick "You're welcome" and left for school.

A math test caught him by surprise when class began, forcing him to momentarily forget his worry over his brother. At the present time, it was more important to worry about his academics. Besides, Koji was more or less all right. And if something was wrong, his stepmother would handle things. Koichi had really liked her; she was the kind of person he figured Koji would put his trust in. If there was a problem, she was sure to take care of it.

Lunchtime was when he began to reflect on the previous night, though. He didn't have much of an appetite—not that it mattered with his pangs of guilt that would have kept him from eating anyway. Koji had been unusually quiet the night before, especially when Alice told him it was best that he stayed behind on future missions. Normally, he'd be half-shouting back with reasons on why he _should _be allowed to keep it up, but he'd merely nodded instead. It wasn't like him to just give up so easily. And he'd seemed so distant, like there was something he'd been thinking about and didn't want to share. That too was curious. It was always Koji who warned Koichi that as brothers, it was wrong for them to keep important secrets from one another. True, they were allowed to have privacy, but this seemed to be crossing the line from privacy to secrecy. The problem could be minor like Koichi's constant nightmares, or severe like his existence in the Digital World. And either way, he wanted to know what it was so that he could help.

_But first, I need to get help myself, _he realized. _I need to tell Koji exactly what I've been seeing when I close my eyes. It might not help him at all, but it will prove to him that we have to share these kinds of things. Otherwise there's no reason in our being brothers._

There was a sudden flare of commotion in the schoolyard, waking Koichi from his trance. A large crowd was forming in the area of the outburst, and other students were making a loud hajj toward it.

"What's going on?" Koichi questioned as a girl from his class pushed past him.

"That's what we're going to find out," she answered.

A thick ring of children surrounded whatever it was that had done so well at captivating their attention. Koichi found himself at the back of the throng, standing on his toes to see what was in the center of the ring. But after a while, his curiosity gave out, and he began to leave.

"Koichi Kimura."

The expressionless voice filled him with dread. As if he was caught in a horror movie, he turned his head and body slowly to the left so that he could see the object of his fear. Schoolchildren stepped away, forming a path leading out of the circle. The slow precision was suspenseful, building up to the climax of when the protagonist and antagonist met eyes. Teachers appeared seemingly from nowhere, trying to determine where this mysterious girl had come from and what she wanted with the sixth grader. Jeri and Koichi stared long and hard at each other, Jeri entirely void of emotion and Koichi somewhat frightened. But finally, he turned and walked toward her while school personnel tried to keep him back.

"You're not going to fight her alone?" a friend from class asked him.

"He won't be alone," a somber yet reassuring voice affirmed. Alice walked onto the campus in her uniform and the slippers that were standard for it. She hadn't even paused to change shoes. "I'll help him."

"We take this away from the school," Koichi ordered Jeri. "I won't agree on any other terms." She didn't acknowledge him and instead prepared another chaos bomb, one that was half-filled with red.

"This isn't your decision," Alice warned. "Everybody, head for a part of the school that has a lot of trees! You'll be safest there."

"We cannot allow you three children to fight," a teacher refused.

"Believe me, we stopped being children a long time ago," Koichi murmured. More audibly, he informed, "We'll be perfectly all right. It's the rest of you that aren't protected. Nothing will happen to us as long as you all hide someplace safe." Something about his tone eased the adults' fears, and they herded the rest of the children into the wooded areas to safety. It was irrational and irresponsible, but it was the only thing they could do. It was that odd "true chaos" once again.

Once all the innocents were gone, Jeri surged at them with her claw-like nails. Koichi was grateful for the barrier being transmitted from the apparatus on the neck of his sand-colored sweater; small amounts of chaos splashed off of it and fell to the earth, where the organic compounds of the soil prevented the anti-data from causing any harm. He did wish, however, that he had some kind of protection from touching her skin. In the Digital World, where it was possible to feel the D-Reaper inside her, her flesh was very hot, whereas it was cold and dead in the Human World. Eventually, he gave up trying to strike her and concentrated mainly on tiring her. Instead of returning every blow, he allowed her to keep coming at him so that he could duck out of the way each time. He kept his movements as effortless as possible in order to keep himself from weakening as well. But the frigid air still burned at his lungs, drying out every bit of warm moisture in his windpipe and mouth. Wisps of steam escaped his breath as it all continued, but Jeri was certainly in far worse condition. Her body was becoming sluggish from trying to move so erratically in such cold weather. She began to slump over as she took breath.

Seeing that Jeri was no longer a threat, Alice came over with an electrode and tried to hook it to the back of her head or neck. But Jeri sensed this instantly and whipped around with a newfound energy. She placed the chaos bomb against Alice and detonated it, showering the other girl in antimatter. As she predicted, Koichi ignored her and ran to assist Alice, who was desperately trying to get the chaos off of her body. Jeri smiled flatly and leapt in the air, leaving the scene as mysteriously as she'd come.

Koichi ignored the painful burning contact with the anti-data caused and began scooping it out of Alice's hair and away from her face. She needed to be able to breathe and think more than anything. But when he wiped it away from her eyes, his fingers encountered a different kind of warmth—a liquid kind. He was mortified to realize that it was a tear.

"Alice, what's wrong?" he checked. What kind of horrors could the chaos be unleashing that would make this strong young woman suddenly begin to cry? He pulled away more chaos from her skin; the algorithms protected her uniform. "I can't help you if you don't let me know what it is."

"It's nothing you can help with," she answered between tears. Koichi noticed that she was clutching something in her left fist. He pulled away the sticky red chaos and forced open her hand to find a silver cross that was now coated in the same coagulated blood-looking substance that covered her. It was odd; she wore it everyday, and it was only now that Koichi really noticed. But he could tell easily that this was important to her, so he had to figure out a way to save it.

"You keep trying to get that stuff off of you," he ordered. "I'll try and get it off your cross."

Remembering that chaos had no effect on anything organic, he began rubbing the cross in the dirt to try and prevent any more damage from being done. But the soil couldn't stick to the chaos, and it only delayed the inevitable. However, in the most desperate of circumstances, the best and usually the craziest ideas are born and take flight, as one did with Koichi. He grabbed the sharpest object he could find—in this case, the edge of Alice's broken electrode—and cut himself across the palm. Then, he placed the cross in his bloody hand and clenched it tightly until it shook. Momentarily, he began to feel dizzy, but not from the chaos that could very easily enter his body. Rather, it was the opposite, like something was pushing it away from him. It was like some kind of energy was leaving his cells and burning away the intruder. He only hoped it would do for the cross as it did for his body.

The lightheadedness suddenly passed, almost as if informing Koichi that the threat was gone. He opened his blood-soaked hand to see the cross lying atop a brown scab on his palm. The cross was rather bloody but otherwise all right. He handed it to a bewildered Alice, informing, "Here."

The chaos had been removed from her hands, but it wouldn't have been able to penetrate the coat of blood on the cross anyway. She held the small pewter object gently and looked at Koichi thankfully. He smiled in response, a flush of rose spreading across his face and a fluttery feeling in the pit of his stomach. That was odd. When had he begun thinking of Alice in _that _way? He supposed it began when he saw her secret tears, but he'd never really started feeling anything too strongly until now.

_Sure, I was a little insistent on having her stay for breakfast yesterday, but that was to make up for asking about her past, _he thought. _Wasn't it? _That oddness in his stomach argued the opposite. And the more he reflected on it, the more he realized he hadn't suddenly developed these feelings overnight. He'd just been too busy worrying about Koji to think much about Alice.

Students and teachers began returning to the yard cautiously, wondering if the dangerous young woman would return. Koichi helped Alice stand and placed a reassuring arm around her. It was a bit unlike him to do so, but he had to give her comfort in any possible way.

"If it's all right, I'd like to take her home," he requested of the principal. "She's been through a lot right now."

"All right," the principal replied, "but you stay home as well. I'll be calling your parents tonight to inform them of this. I need your name and hers."

"She doesn't go to this school."

"I can see that, but I need to let your parents know that she was involved as well."

"My mom knows her. She knows that we're friends. And I'll let her grandfather know what happened." The resolve in his eyes and face was a testament to this. The principal nodded and took his name before allowing him to leave. But to both of them, it didn't feel right that this was taking place. Why on earth should an eleven-year-old boy ever be considered mature enough to do such a thing? What was the world becoming?

-------  
Koichi returned to the McCoys' apartment later that afternoon, after explaining everything to his mother before the school could inform her first. She hadn't been happy at all about it, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. This had been an attack at school, and even if he was pulled away from the mission, he would still be in danger. It was unavoidable.

He knocked on the wood next to Alice's door to check and see if she was willing to talk to anyone. To his surprise, she opened. Her eyes were bloodshot and grainy from crying, and she had an expression of guilt when she saw him.

"I'm sorry for causing such a fuss back there," she apologized. "I shouldn't have prompted you to cut yourself."

He glanced momentarily at the bandage wrapped around his left palm. Aloe vera gel had been rubbed all over his hands to help ease the burning. "It's all right. I probably would have hurt myself anyway trying to get the chaos off of you. Can I come in? There's something I want to ask."

"All right." She permitted him to enter, but she kept the door open out of correct etiquette. A young woman and a young man were not supposed to be in the same room with the door closed, no matter what country they lived in. "What is it you want to know?"

He wasn't sure how to ask, so he began walking around the room, glancing at various photographs. One caught his eye immediately. It was of a very young Alice, dressed for Halloween. She wore a blue dress, a white apron, and a black headband over her blond hair. In her hand was a stuffed white rabbit, helping Koichi recognize the book this was from.

"Was _Alice in Wonderland _your favorite book?" he questioned.

She came over to see the photo he was transfixed on. "No," she replied. "My favorite was _The Wizard of Oz._ I think it has to do with the fact that my mother's name was Dorothy."

"I asked Dolphin what happened to your parents," he confessed. "I'm guessing that cross was from them?"

She nodded. "It was a silly little thing my father bought me one day. I'm surprised I can even remember it." She fingered the pewter charm delicately. "My father wanted to get me a real cross for my birthday the year he died. But he never got the chance to. Ever since then, I only wear this one. Besides, I'm not really Christian—my beliefs are a little too erratic for any organized religion. I'm a heretic to most of them."

"How so?"

"One of the things I believe is that there is no true evil; therefore, there is no Hell. All evil that happens on Earth is merely a nightmare we're all having, and when we wake up, it'll all be gone."

Koichi regarded this carefully. It did sound comforting to think that there was no need to constantly be reincarnated to make up for bad deeds and wait to achieve nirvana. "I think I like that idea. I mean, I've done some truly evil things before as Duskmon. I'd like to think that whatever god or higher deity there is has forgiven me and all those others who have made the same mistakes."

"Like Jeri, you mean."

"Not just her. There are a lot more people like that too."

Alice put her hand on his shoulder and stared directly into his eyes. She wanted a straight answer, and this way, he'd have to give it. "Do you have a crush on me?"

His face became a vibrant hue of red. His throat caught, and her intense gaze prevented him from lying. After a pathetic attempt at answering verbally, he simply nodded. With that confession, she let him go.

"This isn't something I expected to happen," she admitted. "To tell you the truth, Grandfather warned me it was possible with one of you. I didn't believe him." She sighed. "I've grown up in a household of only men; I _should _know more than I do about what to do about this."

"It's weird how similar we are," he commented suddenly. "I grew up with just my mom and grandma. A few months ago, my grandma died, leaving just me and Mom."

"But you managed to find your brother."

"After ten days of being too afraid to talk to him and all that time in the Digital World spent trying to kill him. I think that's why I felt connected to you; you're someone who would understand."

"Then that's where we'll start out," she decided. He looked at her in confusion. "For now, we'll get to understand each other. Then we'll see what happens from there. And if anything does come from it, this is the best way for it to happen. I believe that any two people—lovers or friends—should know each other very well. Otherwise, there's no point to either type of relationship."

"Then what do you want to know first?" he asked.

"Whatever you can think of."

He sat down on the bed, and she followed suit. "The best and worst thing that ever could have happened to me was getting the corrupted Spirit of Darkness. It was only that way I could have met Koji, even if Grandma didn't tell me about him beforehand. I never would have gotten the nerve to talk to him otherwise. Even now, there are times when I'm scared, like when it comes to meeting my father. It's been months, and I still can't do it. Maybe I'll try one day, but I don't know when."

"Someday you'll have to."

"I know. But something terrible would have to make that possible. And right now, I'm afraid of what that terrible something will be." She nodded, watching him carefully. It suddenly became a lot easier for both of them to talk, and so they continued for the rest of the afternoon. For the first time in their lives, they felt that they had someone outside the family to talk to, who would understand their problems. It was a good feeling, like a tiny drop of order amidst all a sea of chaos.

**Take note that Alice's beliefs do not reflect mine. They're just invented to further her character. The dog's ****name being Akemi was the same as in the end of "Echoes of Angels." And Dorothy is the name of Roger Smith's android maid in _Big O. _****Till the next!**


	6. Canta Per Me

_"Sing for me goodbye_  
_That sweet sound  
__Of days passed  
__Always reminds me."  
__Noir: "Canta Per Me"  
__(My translation from Italian)_

_Recommended Music:  
__A talk—"Useless Chatting"  
__Dolphin—"Bear"  
__Distracted soul—"Bridge 06"  
__Chase—"Magic and Sword"  
__Acrophobia/Falling—"Canta Per Me," Japanese or Fiction versions_

Fiction  
Track 06: "Canta Per Me"

The days and weeks to come saw more and more of Koichi and Alice together, much to the wry amusement of both Dolphin and Koji. There was still no indication that Alice returned Koichi's albeit embarrassed affections, but it was clear that she did enjoy his company, which may or may not have meant anything. But that alone was still good enough, and they continued to spend time together outside of anything work-related, such as a meeting at a local fast food place for some fries.

Rather than sitting inside the restaurant, they took their food out to a table shaded by a large umbrella. It was just too warm inside the building, so the cold wind outdoors was a relief for them.

"You know we're going to be complaining how cold we are soon, right?" Koichi asked.

"Better that we're out here. It gives us a chance to talk without anyone overhearing things." It seemed that like Tomoko Kimura, Alice McCoy also had her own way of referring to anything in relation to the Digital World.

"Like what?"

"Like what's been troubling you for so long." Koichi blinked and stared at her in surprise. "I can tell Koji knows what's going on, but I won't force him to violate that sacred bond of trust brothers have. My grandfather and I have both noticed there's something bothering you. It's been bothering you since the day we met, but it's been worse since Jeri attacked Koji."

He stared down at his food, as he was wont to do when he had any type of confession or explanation to make. The grease from the French fries had stained the napkin they were placed on, and the salt they were seasoned with sparkled in the afternoon sun. He could smell the warm tomato scent of the ketchup Alice had on hers. Cars whizzed past them and stopped when traffic lights changed. People walked by aimlessly, chattering pointlessly, never once noticing the two children seated in the shadows. Never did they notice, nor did they suspect that these young people were the last hope for saving the world. And if they did, they'd never believe it. Why should they? These children defied all logic passed down from old legends and fairytales. Why would great heroes hide from the light, when the heroes before always embraced it?

"Well?" Alice pressed. By now, Koichi knew that she would persist even longer than Koji, who at least gave up before a month or so passed.

"Ever since I stopped being Duskmon, I've had nightmares. Most of these—nearly all of these—revolve around Koji dying. Lately though, I've been the killer. And I've told him, yeah, so that eased them a bit. But what's weird is this: Koji and I are usually able to feel each other's pain. He described it best by saying that when one of us suffers, so does the other. But—I don't know when this started; maybe even before Jeri came—I began having trouble feeling that from him. I had no idea he was pulled to the Digital World, and I was startled when he said that he was having the memory bursts in the afternoon, instead of at night like I thought. It's like he's being pulled away slowly, and I don't think even he can stop it."

"Hmm," Alice commented after a while. Was this the personal word for all the McCoys when it came to deeply reflecting upon something? "I'm not really sure what to say. I'm just a Messenger, not a Warrior or a Tamer, so I can't really guess anything. But I have to agree that this is disturbing—maybe not for the same reasons you think it is, but it's definitely a hint that something's not right. But it may not be anything serious; it could just have to do with his immune system being weaker. He _would _have to put more energy into staying healthy."

"Yeah, that's probably it," Koichi agreed, managing to force down some fries. That _had_ to be the answer. It made the most sense. _Of course_ it was only Koji's weakened immune system! This was no more than a cold plaguing the psychological connection between the twins.

Then why did it seem even less comforting than before?

-------  
The chilly December air whipped at Koji as he walked through his neighborhood. He'd only recently gotten over the worst of his cold, so his father and stepmother asked him not to stray too far when he offered to walk the dog. Akemi was the only chance he had of escaping the confines of his room.

He inhaled a relatively deep breath, trying unsuccessfully not to cough when the bitterly cold wind ravaged his throat with its searing kiss. Akemi stopped and began barking at him, as though asking her master if he was all right. Another hand took his and placed several cough drops in it.

"Take one of these," Dolphin's familiar voice warned once Koji's coughing fit was under control. He wheeled himself closer while Koji tried to hold on to Akemi's leash. "The worst thing about the winter—or even the pre-winter—is the cold, dry air. It steals the moisture from your breath, making you cough more. So I always carry around plenty of cough drops to help replace it. Candy works too, but the medicine in cough drops provides more moisture."

Koji placed a honey lemon cough drop in his mouth and felt the vapors of sharp-tasting medication flow back into his throat. The cold air around him was warmed with help from the moisture provided and no longer blistered his throat and lungs. "Thanks," he replied. "But what are you doing here?"

"Just looking for someone willing to listen to an old man's rambling for a little while. You interested? You can even call it helping the elderly, if you want."

Koji shrugged. "All right."

They wandered along the streets for a while with Koji constantly trying to keep Akemi under control. Every little thing that crossed their path was something for her to bark at or chase, and the interruptions made it more and more difficult for Dolphin to get into any actual conversation. Finally, they gave up and headed back to Koji's house, where Dolphin took his opportunity to speak outside the fence.

"From what I've seen of the Tamers and of you and Koichi, it's easier to save the world than it is to grow up," he observed. "You've all grown into being yourselves, but you have trouble adjusting that to real life. And if there's anyone who's noticed your changes the most, it's your parents."

"I've changed a lot, all right," Koji agreed, momentarily contemplating his improved relations with his family members. "But some people haven't at all." The comment was an accident, brought about by his impatience with his brother and father. But it wasn't something he could unsay, and it wasn't something that Dolphin could ignore.

"Maybe it's not that they haven't changed as much as it's that they're trying to slow the change," he suggested. "Or they realize that there are things that can't be changed, and it's something they don't want to be reminded of. A wise man once confided in me that 'the past isn't a slate we can just wipe clean again and reuse. It's more like a river, branching into many possible futures.'" He paused for a moment to look at the boy. "Your dad said that when we met once. I asked him if he and Koichi got along well because I never saw them near each other."

"They have a fear of each other," Koji explained.

"I learned that much. But your father explained to me that it's hard for him to even try to meet Koichi because he's afraid of what to expect, not so much that he's afraid of the person himself. My guess is Koichi is the same way."

"That's a lot like what Satomi told me."

"I'm not surprised. But it's also not surprising that you have trouble understanding this. You grew up wanting to know everything you could about your family, so you were able to forgive Koichi in a way that he's still surprised by. But Koichi already knew there was a divorce, so he probably thought that his father essentially abandoned him. Even when he learned of you, he still was upset at knowing that he wasn't allowed to be part of that family. He knew it was the law that prevented it, but it still hurt him. He may be afraid that it's not just the law that's in the way, but his father's own choice."

"But Dad would never do that!"

"You know that, and so do others in your family. But Koichi's not sure. And your father isn't sure of what Koichi wants. So far, only you've brought the issue of visitation rights up, forcing your parents to voluntarily allow visitation rights and temporary joint custody—but only in the most extreme of emergencies because actual joint custody is still illegal."

Koji was quiet for a moment, recalling the day in court when the judges looked at him with perplexed faces. "Koichi was silent for the most part that day. I think he only agreed to back me up because he didn't want me to have to break my promise."

"I won't lie to you, Koji," Dolphin confided, "the law in Japan is wrong. In America, it's perfectly common for there to be joint custody and visitation rights, but it's almost unheard of here. That's why Japan's the number two destination for parental abduction, second only to Mexico. And it's unfair that even when visitation rights are agreed upon, like with your parents, they don't get enforced. Your parents recognize though that it's all right to break tradition if the need is so great. And it is."

"Koichi and I never would have ended up fighting each other in the Digital World if not for this damn law." He didn't care that it was impolite to swear in front of an adult. The idea that a simple change in his country's laws would have prevented some of the atrocities he'd faced was enough to make him curse rapidly and passionately before even Ophanimon.

"It's not the law that's holding Koichi and your dad from meeting, remember. It's their fear. But Koichi can see that you've turned out to be a good person under your father's care, and your father knows that you and Koichi are closer than you'd be even without the divorce, so they'll eventually be able to conquer those old fears. And you keep pushing them to it. You're probably the only evidence that there's no truth to their anxiety."

"Thanks. I'll remember that."

"No problem. But all that explaining suddenly made me crave something sweet. Let's see if we can find Alice and Koichi so we can get something. And if we can't find them, we'll just get it anyway." Koji blinked in surprise and followed, this time leaving Akemi at home. Dolphin may have been a bit of a strange old man, but he did provide some important commentary that let Koji know that he wasn't the only person in Japan that hated the way things were. And he insisted that Koji kept trying to heal the rift in his family. He was the only one who honestly seemed to believe that there was a chance of succeeding.

_He's kind of weird, but I like him,_ Koji decided. It was good to have another friend like Satomi, someone older and more schooled in the ways of the world, though it was surprising for him to hear himself admit that. _It's odd how so many things are changing,_ he added. But unlike most people, he found that he _liked _these changes. The future was suddenly starting to look a lot brighter, he noticed as he forced down a cough that threatened to rip open his chest cavity. It was going to be interesting to grow up and watch it unfold.

-------  
Koichi pulled his coat closely around him, as though feeling a chill no others could. He and Alice were currently walking home in silence, having finished their French fries not long before. His talk with her had only barely calmed his fears, but it had instilled a small sense of urgency that he had to talk over this subject more thoroughly with his twin. Maybe then they could find an answer and he could sleep soundly at night.

"Are you still worried?" Alice questioned. He nodded. "I can't promise that it'll be all right. God knows I've found everything that can possibly go wrong in my life. And I can't pray for your sake—I'm not sure any god will listen to such a heathen like me. But I can suggest to Koji that he see a doctor or something, so you won't have to suffer the embarrassment of revealing your fears to him."

His expression brightened more than it had in several days. "Will you really?" She nodded in response, and he regained control of his emotions long enough to remember that this was going to be a big favor. "I shouldn't ask you to, but Koji doesn't want me to worry about him. I think he thinks he's caused me enough pain, with me going through everything in the Digital World just because I wanted to meet him. But he'll probably listen to you or Dolphin if either of you points out that something's wrong."

"I'll find out what's wrong if you can't," she promised. "Think of it as a way of me repaying you for all you've done for me?"

He blinked. "For the cross?"

She shook her head. "Both you and Koji are the first close friends I've ever had. I wasn't even very close to the Tamers, and even less so when my suspicions about Jeri proved to be right. You two are the first people aside from my grandfather that I can speak to freely, ever since Dobermon died." He nodded once at the uncomfortable silence that ensued. Aside from his grandmother, no one else he cared about had died. He couldn't imagine having lived a life like Alice had, where nearly everyone she loved had gone. He didn't want to imagine it.

He shielded his eyes with a hand and glanced up at the sky, prepared to warn his friend of the approaching shower when a darting figure caught his attention. The silhouette flitted from rooftop to rooftop, unnoticed by all save the boy.

"What is it?" Alice questioned.

"Jeri."

Either instinct or a temporary loss of sanity propelled him forward, forcing him running through unfortunate crowds at a speed he didn't know he could attain. Had he the sense to look to the side, he'd have noticed his brother standing right next to him for an instant, watching confusedly while he sped down the sidewalk. But his vision was focused on Katou's retreating form, dashing endlessly in the clouded heavens. He thought he heard someone call his name from far in the distance, but he wasn't sure until Alice ran up to confirm it.

"You ran past Koji back there," she informed. "Didn't you notice him calling you?"

_Tunnel vision,_ he thought. Koji was not going to be particularly happy with him about this. "I didn't actually. I heard him a little, but I didn't realize it was him. My mind was on other things."

"You can slow down a little. We can't catch her like this anyway. We might as well let her go this time."

Koichi couldn't. Every second wasted was another chance for the D-Reaper-within-Jeri to inch closer and closer to spreading worldwide chaos in a world that had already been destroyed once. He had been dead and unable to help prevent the first disaster; he was now alive and _would_ prevent the second.

That instinct/insanity took control again, and he found himself suddenly racing up a flight of stairs to the roof of another building, his acrophobia suddenly nonexistent. He had no time to wonder how he'd managed to get himself from the sidewalk to the roof of another building with Alice screaming for him to turn back, and if he did, it wouldn't matter. Somehow, he'd caught up to Jeri.

She stood on the ledge of the building adjacent to him and turned around to look at him with her dreadful blank eyes. She spoke, but the howling wind stole her voice. But with a superhuman ability he hadn't had before, Koichi was able to read her lips:

"It is all inevitable in the end. Your fears will be realized sooner or later, by my hands or another's." She turned away, prepared to exit.

"What do you mean?" he shouted in return. She turned her head and spoke one voiceless word:

"Destiny."

The hated word, the odious philosophy. That was not an answer he could accept. Koichi was about to step forward—forgetting that he was atop a several-story tall office building—and felt the world lurching below him. He was in that moment aware of his situation, that the wind was throwing his balance into the hands of all the gods that had ever existed. He fell onto his right knee, feeling a sharp pain as he gripped the edge of the roof, cursing the architect and inspectors who had failed to see the significance of placing a fence up to prevent anyone from falling. His apartment had one, and his school had one, so why didn't this building have one too?

He chanced a look down, knowing that if he survived this, his fear of heights was going to worsen a lot more if he survived. A small crowd of people had gathered upon noticing the children atop the roof. And though he couldn't see too clearly from the distance, he thought he spotted his brother in the audience, watching in desperation, his face dead white. Koichi was fortunate that another wave of vertigo crashed over him with the wind's thrashing, trying to drown him in fear until he lost his hold and plummeted to the ground below. He would have lost heart even more if he'd managed to focus his eyes on Koji's fearful expression, one that had only once been present on the former Warrior of Light's face, and it had been during the heart-wrenching discovery of Koichi's condition in the hospital. Fortunate he was though that when he did fall off the raised ledge, he landed on the lower part of the roof.

Alice had managed to reach him at this moment and tried to help him stand while he was bent over on his hands and knees, the appendages quaking in terror as his insides twisted and rearranged in gruesome designs that tried to force their contents up. But he was too sick to even vomit. And when Alice escorted him downstairs, he felt as if the wind still controlled his destiny. He gripped the banisters and Alice's arm desperately, afraid of falling still.

He reached the sweet firm earth once again, still shaking from fear. Strangers offered comfort as much as they could before allowing the traumatized boy and his companion to walk to their respective family members. Koichi could barely remember his brother's face during all this: a terrible mixture of fear, relief, and a hint of anger. But he knew that Koji had cried for a little bit when they embraced. He could hear the incriminating unsteadiness of tears in his voice as he whispered, "You idiot. You idiot."

-------  
Koji sighed as he sat on the floor of the terrace outside his window. He leaned against the sturdy wall of the balcony as he reflected on all that had occurred that day, trying his hardest to banish the images of his brother's near fall. But it always returned to him, and he could not help but wonder about Jeri's actions. She had seemed unable to kill when he spoke to her. Yet she threw Koichi into danger like that, caring not when he lost his footing and nearly slipped completely. Was the D-Reaper all that remained of her now?

"I don't think so," he commented to only the sky.

A gray cloud passed overhead, eclipsing the sun. Almost as though cued by the loss of light, Koji's lungs seemed to harden. He'd felt out of breath from running after Koichi earlier, but now he felt like he couldn't get any air into his body. He stood up quickly and forced himself to cough, forcing whatever that horrible breathlessness was to leave him. Pink-tinged phlegm appeared on his hands from the coughing, and he bent over as he tried to breathe normally again. But something was wrong… Why had he leaned over the balcony? Why couldn't he think straight? Why was it so hard to take in air? The ground suddenly came up to meet him.

At least, the cloud unveiled the sun, which shone on the still form of a young boy who was being carried away on a stretcher to an ambulance while his father and stepmother had to stand by with helpless tears of uncertainty.

**Information on the divorce laws is the same as it is in the Kousei fic "All the Fears You Hold So Dear": from —mainly in the article "Divorced From Their Children: In Japan, Foreign Fathers Have Few Custody Options" by Doug Stone and Sachiko Sakamaki from the _Washington Post._ And information over Koji's condition is still classified. ****And regarding the "Canta Per Me" versions, I listened to the original version and I didn't find that it fit the scenes as well as the softly sung Japanese version or the passionate _Fiction _interpretation. Plus, in _Fiction, _the instrumentals were a lot better. Anyway, you all know what I expect in your reviews. Here's to the hope that the next chapters will be good! Till then.**


	7. Zodiacal Sign

_"With only the twilight in their embrace,  
__The waves of days past are already deep at the ocean's bottom  
__Knowing no sadness, dreaming blue dreams, fast asleep."  
__.hack/Liminality: "Tasogare no Umi"  
__(Translated by Graywords)  
__(Not on the Fiction CD)_

_Recommended Music:  
__Brothers—"Tasogare no Umi"  
__Playing tourist—"Morgana," tolerance version  
__Chinatown—"Zodiacal Sign"  
__Koichi—"Broken Wings"_

Fiction  
Track 07: "Zodiacal Sign"

It was the second time in two days that Koichi had run like a man possessed through Japan's streets. But this time, he wore a duffel bag of his clothes and personal items over his shoulder. The situation was so distressing that he wished it was only part of another of his nightmares, but it could not be so. Whatever cruel deity there was had decided that this scenario would be real instead of imaginary.

Koichi only ran because he didn't want to have to risk having his mother and father meet. Even in this catastrophe, he didn't want to take any chances of finding out the hard way that there was some resentment between them still. To ease Tomoko's fears over Koji's condition, the two families had had a conversation over the phone for the first time in many years, giving Koji the chance to tell his birth mother that he was all right aside from being confined to his bed until further notice. But to everyone's general surprise, he'd asked if Koichi could sleep over for a few nights until his father and stepmother said he was well enough to return to his normal life. The elder twin agreed immediately.

And now he stopped short at the front door. His hand had frozen just as he was about to knock. He had not wanted his parents to meet, but he had neglected the fact that he was still unsure if he wanted to meet his father. The paralyzing fear held him in place, a statue planted in front of the house. All that moved were his shaking legs and the nervous perspiration that slipped down his face.

It was a real wonder he hadn't messed himself yet.

The door suddenly opened on him with Koji on the other side. The patient in question wore a T-shirt and sweatpants for comfort, and his bandana was tied in its usual place in order to conceal the white cap of bandages he was cursed with. He blinked once at the sight of his brother's immobile form, but he pulled him inside while whispering, "Quick, up to my room!"

Koichi wasn't sure as to the reason behind the secrecy, but he slipped quietly up the stairs and to the room he and his brother were to share for the next few days. There, Koji got back under the covers of his bed, revealing the answer: He wasn't allowed to get out of bed yet.

"You should stay in bed," Koichi advised. "After that fall…"

"The MRI said I'm fine," he argued. "No damage to my brain when I hit the ground. I was lucky that I hit the grass. I was lucky…" His voice was low as he said this, as though he'd just realized how lucky he'd been. Koichi couldn't think of anything to say.

"Koji, when's your brother going to…" Satomi started, walking into the room to see the twins. "Hello, Koichi, I didn't hear you knock. How did you get in?" As she asked this, she watched Koji suspiciously for any reaction. He kept his expression neutral. Koichi fought very hard not to laugh at this.

"Never mind," she finally replied. "It was a stupid question. I already know who let you in. And I'm debating whether or not I should treat that person to the surprise I bought for dinner." She then turned to Koichi. "You'll let me know if he disobeys doctor's orders again, won't you?" He nodded. It was just too good an offer to pass up. For some reason he didn't understand, he enjoyed watching Koji put up with this. It was…well, fun. "Thank you. Depending on how he acts, I'll decide whether I should share this surprise."

Once she left, Koji muttered, "Traitor," in his brother's direction. The elder twin merely laughed.

"For someone who swears he has no sense of humor, you manage to get yourself into some funny situations." After a moment of silence, he questioned softly, "I noticed that Satomi is a little protective of you—not _too _overprotective, but... She worries about you, maybe even more than I do."

"She can't have kids," Koji explained. "Nothing she's tried has worked. So she's attached to me. I guess I replace the kids she can't have herself."

"Oh." It was a stupid response, but it was all he could think of. This was a new concept to him.

"She's okay with it, I think. But she knows that she can't even trick herself into thinking she's my mom. That's why—"

"That's why you call her by her name," he realized, the images he'd scanned from Koji's memory so long ago now returning to him. "She was upset about it when Dad made you promise…"

"Yeah," Koji answered. "She talked to me about it later when we came home." He placed his hands behind his head and lay back on the pillow, slipping into a thoughtful quiet while Koichi unpacked his clothes and sat on the futon across from Koji's bed. He wasn't sure what his twin was thinking, and he'd given up guessing long ago.

"Koji, something wrong?" he asked.

"Yeah, actually." Koichi, feeling this was only right, got up and sat at the edge of Koji's bed. It wasn't often the younger confessed a problem to the elder; this had to be important.

"What is it?"

"When I woke up in the hospital, everyone staring at me and running tests, I was scared. I've never really been afraid of anything before, and after the Digital World, there's not a lot that can scare me anymore. But this time, I was."

"How…how did you fall?" It was something he'd been afraid of asking, but he had to know.

Koji shrugged. "I was having trouble breathing, and for some reason, I leaned over the balcony rail to try and breathe—don't ask me why I did; I myself don't even know why. But I must have lost consciousness and fell. Dad and Satomi heard and called for an ambulance."

Koichi fought the urge to shiver. He'd developed climacophobia—the fear of falling down stairs—and acrophobia—the fear of heights—after his spill at the Shibuya train station. His acrophobia had heightened drastically after his near-accident the day before. Though the fall from the second-story balcony was nowhere near as bad as a fall from an office building, it still terrified him to no end.

"What else is bothering you?" he managed to question. "It can't just be the fall."

"No," he replied. "Koichi, the day we met Alice, I ran into Jeri."

"What? You never told me that."

"There wasn't much to tell. She just kept asking me a lot of questions about why I would give up my life to help you."

"Why would she want to know that?"

"I don't know. But I know that she also had the same problems as me when it came to her family. And then…"

"Then what?"

"Koichi, doesn't it seem weird that the D-Reaper didn't just kill the Tamers and rid herself of that problem? They defeated her once, so they could figure out how to do it again. Why did she just come here instead?"

"I don't know," he confessed. "But you're right. It does seem weird."

"It _is _weird. So I think that it means Jeri has some influence in the D-Reaper's decisions. I've said it before, but this time I really believe it. Those people were her closest friends; she _couldn't _hurt them. So she came here, where she has no emotional connection to people."

"But she does to you!" Koichi exclaimed. "She hasn't attacked you at all since you came off this. She can sympathize with you…" He trailed off for a minute before staring at the floor. "Makes me wish that we'd figured it all out sooner. We might have had an answer to all of this now."

"It doesn't matter anyway," Koji answered, turning over to his side. "I wouldn't be able to help anyway."

In their temporary silence, they could hear the front door open downstairs and their father enter the house. He was normally the one that stayed home to take care of Koji so Satomi didn't have to miss class, but he was finishing up a case and couldn't afford to take a day off yet. Koichi felt a chill in the room and went to close the balcony window only to see that it wasn't open. The coldness was the fear inside his soul. He would soon have to face his greatest fear. It was the consequence of finally being allowed to spend time with his brother; the not-quite joint custody gave both boys the chance to visit each other and the opposite parents for longer periods of time, but it meant that Koichi would have to finally confront his father after these months of nervous wondering.

"Koichi?" his brother questioned, sitting up in concern. "Are you okay?"

Before he could answer, Satomi entered the room with two steaming boxes of food. "Dinner time. I'm letting you both eat up here tonight, but I hope you can join us at the table this week." She handed each boy a box and a bamboo skewer.

The twins had identical expressions of half-confusion, half-suspicion. Almost in unison, they opened the red paperboard cartons to find round balls of fried batter and boiled octopus.

"_Takoyaki_?" they exclaimed in utter surprise, glancing up to ask Satomi why she'd bought a street vendor food for dinner. But the woman had left, wishing more for them to enjoy their treat than to let it get cold by asking many questions. Realizing the futility, they stuck their skewers through their _takoyaki_ and began to eat.

Koichi had gotten halfway through his dinner when he noticed that Koji was staring into space, leaving his _takoyaki _mostly uneaten. Concerned, he asked, "Is something wrong?"

"Huh?" Koji responded, wakening to reality. "Oh. Yeah. There is."

Koichi put his skewer inside his carton, trying to show his twin that he was not going to be distracted while they talked. "What is it?"

"I feel stupid for asking this, and I know that it's wrong to make you remember it, but…but I was so afraid that I was going to die. Nobody in the hospital knew what was wrong with me. I had to go through CT scans and MRIs… I wasn't sure what was going to happen to me. It got me wondering."

"Wondering what?"

"Koichi, what's it like when you die?"

There was a very sickening feeling in his stomach. It wasn't so much as that it had no bottom as much as it felt like he was falling again, gravity trying to pull him down while momentum was forcing his food up. Suddenly, he didn't want to eat the rest of his _takoyaki._

"I'm sorry. Just forget it," Koji informed.

"It's okay," he assured. "Just not a subject I'm used to talking about. Even now, I'm still a little scared by what happened. There are a lot of things I'm scared of: heights, dogs, falling again, death—"

"Dad?" Koji supplied. Koichi pretended to take interest in his food again and ate a few pieces of _takoyaki._ "It's no secret that you are. He's scared too. But you have to face each other sooner or later. That's what I want you to promise me: that you'll finally talk to each other over everything, even if it's just once. Please."

Koichi had to fight back a shiver. This promise was eerily like the one he'd had Koji make to meet their mother. "Is it because you're afraid you'll die? Koji, you're fine—"

"No. It's because I hate seeing what I've been seeing lately: both of you turning away before you can meet eyes, a hundred excuses on why I can't invite you over, or you freezing outside the door like that. I saw the look on your face. You were scared."

He blushed a little as he swallowed his food. "Shitless."

"It scares me when you're like that. I've only seen that a handful of times in the Digital World, and that was when we were closest to dying. I'm afraid that the family we worked so hard to find will just shatter in front of us because of this. I…I don't want to let it go."

"You won't," Koichi replied. "I won't promise anything other than that I'll try. I'll try what I can. Maybe just that alone will be enough. Okay?" He smiled with hope, receiving a small one of relief in return from Koji.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. It's what brothers are for, at least, that's what I think."

-------  
Across town, in the Minato district, Alice and Dolphin were playing tourist. It had been the quietest day they'd experienced in many weeks, so they'd taken advantage of it, visiting Palette Town in Odaiba, the Shinagawa Aquarium, and now the Tokyo Tower in Minato. And while it had been hard for him to get up there in his wheelchair, Dolphin watched the majesty of Tokyo from the 250-meter height.

Alice looked out over the edge, feeling the cold wind float past her, through her. She could just manage to see the distant Mt. Fuji and Mt. Tsukuba. While she had faced heights quite often in her mission to stop Jeri, she had never really gotten the chance to enjoy the splendor around her in the air. And she was glad that she had her grandfather up here to see it as well. Koji might have tried, but he was to stay far away from even staircases until his mysterious fall could be solved. And Koichi wasn't going to go anywhere near even a stepstool after his near accident the day before.

"Where should we go next?" Dolphin asked her. "Do you want to try dinner down at the Tower restaurant?"

She considered this and shook her head. While the Tokyo Tower was breathtaking and she'd enjoyed its "Mysterious Walking Zone" 3D hologram exhibit on the third floor, she'd really had her fill of it today. It was something that had to be explored slowly at a time.

"Should we just go home?" she questioned.

"Not unless you want to. And frankly, I'm hoping dinner will be more exciting than soba noodles. You think of something this time. I had the aquarium and Tower exhibit. Your turn."

If Koji and Koichi had heard this, they would have been very surprised. Alice didn't seem to be the kind of person for carnivals or adventures, but she was. There was a part of her that had loved Ferris wheels and roller coasters, buried somewhere deep inside of her when her father had died. Palette Town's MEGA Web had the first roller coaster she'd been on in years. It was good to feel the adrenaline rush that came with the speed of the coaster, just as good as it felt to have the wind tug at her clothes playfully rather than dangerously.

"Why don't we try Chinatown?" she suggested, receiving a raised eyebrow from her grandfather. She normally didn't like Chinese food, and when she did eat it, she only ate vegetables. When she was little, someone had told her that dog and cat meat made up the beef, chicken, pork, and shrimp in all Chinese recipes. And while she didn't believe that anymore, she had lost her taste for the food almost entirely.

"Chinatown's in Yokohama," he pointed out. "Is this some kind of hidden agenda to visit Koichi and Koji to see how they're doing?"

"No, Grandfather," she answered. He wanted to believe her, but she had a faint blush across her face. He knew as well as she did that she thought of the boys as friends only. So what was causing this? "It's just that…I don't know how to explain it. I feel like I'm being called there or something. It feels like I'm supposed to be at a certain restaurant in Yokohama's Chinatown right now or else all of Fate is going to be thrown out of alignment."

"Well, I would hate to see the entire universe thrown into complete chaos, so I suppose we might as well go," he replied. "Besides, I've been having a craving for General Tso's Chicken for three years now." She smiled softly at his humor. Only during the D-Reaper had he ever been truly worried. For the most part, he looked on the bright side of things, the only true optimist of the odd little group of people that had recently come together. Koichi could try, but his nature as the former Warrior of Darkness held him back; Koji had been living a long time in the dark before learning his destiny was the Spirit of Light, so he was very much a realist. And their families were accustomed to finding the worst possible outcomes to problems. It was nice to see that Rob McCoy could crack a joke every now and then, forcing even the strictest realists to observe how life worked: bad brought good brought bad brought good. It was a cycle. Yes, when something good happened, something bad was bound to follow. But the dark times could never last forever. Light and Darkness needed each other to survive, to keep the world in check. Sometimes, he was the only one who could understand that.

They took the train to Yokohama before taking a bus to Chinatown. It was a relief for them to find a bus that did have wheelchair accessibility; despite the new handicapped-accessibility laws, it was still very hard for the physically and mentally handicapped to get around in Japan. But they made it fine and entered the city.

Chinatown. A city within a city. While buildings and décor were based on traditional Chinese architecture and imagery, the bustling crowds of people informed everyone that it was still Japan. It was all a façade—from the Chinese temple to the blasphemous robot ushering people into a restaurant, the Chinese-Japanese within the city within the city were only pretending to be in the homeland, the god-land that was China, the China that was out of their reach.

Alice's strange calling ended at one restaurant, one that seemed just as auspicious as the rest. It was just as much of an anatopism as any other there. But something—perhaps destiny—pulled her to that one facility, where she and her grandfather were seated and given menus (in Japanese so visitors could understand) and ordered. Dolphin took his General Tso's Chicken while Alice took a chance with _pai ko han,_ or beef ribs and spinach on rice.

Now, Alice was never one for omens. She believed in them a little more than she believed that there was true evil in the world, but she did not honestly make much of the prickling on the back of her neck, the tickling shiver in her spine, or the goose bumps that raised the hair on her arms. To her, there was very little problem. First of all, it was winter, and she was cold. Goose bumps were expected when she was cold. Second, she was eating _meat _in a Chinese restaurant for the first time since that kid had duped her when she was small. She didn't know if there was the slight possibility that her beef wasn't actually beef.

So maybe she believed it a little bit. Who could blame her, really? She and her grandfather usually cooked for themselves. In fact, the last people other than her family who had cooked for her in the past few years were the Katous, the Matsukis, and Ms. Kimura. They were people she knew and trusted. These cooks were complete strangers. And there was the whole "calling" sensation she had. What if it indicated danger?

In a way, it did. She didn't notice it right away, but as she examined a rib before eating it, another waitress caught her eye. She was dressed in a red _qipao_ dress, silk slippers, and jade bracelets, and her light brown hair was tied in two buns on the sides of her head with small braids trailing out of them. She was smiling and laughing with the customers, acting completely unlike the way she did around Alice and Koichi. But there was no doubt about it. She was Jeri Katou.

"Something wrong?" Dolphin questioned, noticing that his granddaughter had paused in the middle of biting her beef rib. He turned to her line of vision to see the object of her distress before he turned back around solemnly. "That explains a lot then."

"Grandfather…"

"No, Alice. Don't get involved in this. Jeri needs this time to be herself. I think it's all that keeps her sane, especially considering what she's done. And working in a restaurant is something familiar to her in this foreign world. She worked in her parents' restaurant before all this started, remember? I guess this is one way she can feel like she's home."

Alice finally ate her beef. It was not unpleasant on its own, but her guilt made it taste bitter as she swallowed. Jeri finally saw her and waved while smiling, as if she didn't know that she had done terrible things and was being hunted by this blonde girl at the table. She suddenly felt very small.

"Just remember this restaurant, Alice," Dolphin advised. "_Shao Pai Long._ Little White Dragon."

They had no contact with Jeri the rest for the rest of their meal. They paid the bill and exited, buying a few Chinese pastries from a local bakery. From there on, it was back to playing tourist, all memories of _Shao Pai Long_ pushed aside. Alice examined different trinkets and gifts in the shops before surrendering and buying a pair of slippers. Next up were the temples, where varied amounts of people entered and exited to pay their respects. It was at one of these temples where a familiar voice called, "Wait!"

The McCoys turned in surprise to see Jeri, her hair slightly disheveled as she tried to catch her breath. She had run instead of leaping across buildings with the abilities the D-Reaper allowed her, not having wanted to expose her identity.

"I was afraid I'd miss you before you left," she admitted, handing over a red envelope. "This is for you." Confused, Alice accepted it and opened to find a street address and keys. "It's where I'm staying. The D-Reaper doesn't know what happens when I'm awake—I make sure of it. If I don't show up for work or class at a small school near here, investigate my apartment. She or I might leave some kind of clue behind." She turned to leave.

"Why are you doing this?" Alice asked, stopping her in her tracks. Jeri turned, her eyes serious but still her own.

"I want the D-Reaper gone as much as you do. And I want all of this to end. I've done so many things I hate. I want it all to stop. Find some way, please." She then ran back to _Shao Pai Long_, unable to extend her visit any longer.

"We will, Jeri," she promised softly.

-------  
That night, Koichi lay awake in his futon. Koji had managed to sleep, propped up on two pillows when he began to have trouble breathing, but the elder twin couldn't. So many things were going wrong in his life. Why was it?

_Destiny just hates me, I guess, _he mused before looking up at his brother. Koji had removed his bandana when he went to sleep, so all the bandages were visible. He realized how close he had come to dying or being brain damaged. He had fallen just like Koichi, but he was lucky enough to have survived. Koichi only lay in bed awake and alive because of Koji's tears, whatever regenerative power existed in his emotions. Was that why he used to keep everything inside? Had he known from the start that he was capable of miracles and perhaps tragedies?

Finally, Koichi just closed his eyes, soothed to sleep by the comforting sounds of his twin's breathing. As long as one of them still breathed, the other would be kept alive.

**_Takoyaki _is an inside-joke between me and my sister Winter Night Phantom. It was Kero and Suppi's obsession in the _Leave it to Kero-chan_ special of _Cardcaptor Sakura: The Sealed Card._ _Shao Pai Long_ came from _Macross_—Minmei and her cousin Kyle starred in a movie called _Little White Dragon._ In the Japanese version, she wrote a song for it called "_Shao Pai Long_" or "Little White Dragon." Minmei also inspired the restaurant's uniforms; they're the same as the uniform she wears for her aunt and uncle's restaurant on the _SDF-1._ Information on Tokyo Tower comes from the official Tokyo Tower website, Chinatown mostly from Captain Japan's Sake-Drenched Postcards, and the other sites Alice stopped at from random tourist sites. ****This chapter is sort-of dedicated to my eleventh grade English teacher for trying to help me find the word "anatopism" for two days. This one is more of an aftermath chapter, giving the characters time to relax before something awful happens. ****Till the next!**


	8. Awaking

_"Hear the chorus of pain  
__Taking you back to proper ways  
__It's so easy to find  
__If you could remind me."  
__.hack/SIGN: "A Stray Child"  
__(Not on the Fiction CD)_

_Recommended Music:  
__Brother's support/"Poor kids"—"Grandpa's Violin"  
__Reading—"Echo" (from Fiction Japanese release)  
__Kousei/Shopping—"Awaking"  
__Jeri's destiny/Koji's fear—"A Stray Child"_

Fiction  
Track 08: "Awaking"

Koichi was excused from school for as long as it took for the family crisis to settle itself. That gave him time to check out _Shao Pai Long_ with Dolphin and keep an eye on Jeri while at the same time making sure Koji was okay.

His brother's condition changed from different extremes on random days. Some days, he was halfway pleading to be let out of the house, while on others, he couldn't even get out of bed. He was restless in two senses of the word: anxious and vying to get better, or tired to the point that he didn't even wake up in the morning. In addition to his coughing fits at night, he'd found that his heart was sometimes palpitating during the day, as if he was living in a nightmare he couldn't wake from. Sometimes he thought he was.

And so he sat at the kitchen table, trying not to poke the last dregs of egg drop soup with his spoon. Dolphin had brought it for him on one of his excursions to _Shao Pai Long_, hoping that the thick broth would help him feel better. It did, but he was having a hard time finishing it.

"Koji, you okay?" Koichi checked, watching him uncharacteristically play with his food.

"Yeah. My stomach's just a little upset right now. Can't finish this. I feel full."

Koichi frowned. "But you haven't eaten anything all day."

"I know. For some reason, I just don't feel hungry today."

This was very odd. It was one thing for Koji not to eat, but for his body to refuse food… It made no sense. How could an empty stomach insist that it was full? It went against all the common sense of an eleven-year-old boy. Koichi was left with only one piece of advice:

"Save what's left in the fridge. Maybe later you'll be hungry." Koji nodded. Neither believed that he would be feeling better later that day, but it was the only logic they could come to: It's wrong to waste food, so save it in case your appetite returns.

Koichi watched in relative worry as his brother put the cover back on the Styrofoam cup of soup and placed it in the refrigerator. Something was definitely wrong with Koji today. He seemed depressed and lethargic, and his body was not agreeing to do what his brain told it to do. This was most evident when he began to go upstairs and slipped on a step, falling on his knee.

"Koji!"

"I'm okay," he assured, standing up. But he wasn't placing any weight on the leg he'd hurt. "I'm just going to go up to my room to read." Koichi stood at the bottom of the stairs, keeping a close eye on his twin as he turned the corner and entered his bedroom. It was scaring him so much to see this. When was the last time Koji had shown a weak side—barring the times he was injured in battle or facing an emotionally scarring situation? He couldn't think of any examples.

_Koji, please get well,_ he begged silently. _This isn't you, this constant anxiety. It's me. I'm Darkness, you're Light. You're not supposed to take both._ He clenched his fists and looked down at them, now blaming his own weakness. Perhaps if he hadn't heeded Death's call and given up his Spirits of Darkness, Koji wouldn't be…

_That's ridiculous!_ shouted a voice in his head that sounded remarkably like Koji. _He fell out of a window and hit his head! He came close to dying; that's a lot to think about for someone. You just have to be there for him._

He took a deep breath and exhaled. He _did_ have to be there to support his brother. After all, Koji had always done the same for him. It was only right. With that incentive, he slowly climbed up the steps to join his twin.

-------  
Keyboard music played in a sad imitation of a piano once Dolphin opened the door to the apartment and wheeled himself in. Though the synthetic piano sounded just awful in comparison to the real thing, the melody was still sweet as Alice lightly brushed each key, swaying ever so often in the beat. She had been playing for a while when she heard him come in, and now she changed to the violin, which sounded at least a little better. It would be much more preferable if they had the real instruments, but the keyboard was all they had room for in that small apartment.

"Did you find anything at _Shao Pai Long_?" she asked.

"No, but I did stop by to drop off some soup for Koji. If you ask me, they're both getting worse."

"Both?"

"Koji may be weak in body, but Koichi's weak in spirit. I can tell that it's taxing on him to deal with. No matter how long it may seem to them, they've only just met, and now they were just faced with saying goodbye. The poor kids are losing the fight against this depression."

"Grandfather, Koji Minamoto and Koichi Kimura are the last people on Earth that can be called 'poor kids.'"

Dolphin raised an eyebrow. Alice kept her back to him as she kept playing softly and gently. "How so?"

"They fought against the complete destruction of their home and continue to fight against a young girl whose alter is trying to place the world in mass chaos. Their family was ripped apart in front of their eyes at an early age, and they're only just now sewing the pieces back together."

"In other words, they're just like you?" She didn't answer. She kept playing her song, but she didn't speak. "Alice, you're right. It's wrong to call them 'poor kids.' They're certainly not. But it's not for the same reasons you see it as. It's not just because they're determined to keep everything together; it's because they have friends and family who can get them through it all. And if you ask me, Alice, Koichi's probably the luckier of the two. He knows more deeply than Koji that he can depend on you."

He wheeled toward his bedroom, leaving Alice in the living room with her keyboard. One of her rare and delicate smiles graced her lips, softening her face and warming her soul. It was good to know that she was doing some good, good to know she was still needed. She would visit Koichi and Koji soon to see how they were doing. In the meantime, she continued playing her tune, that soft and comforting melody that always reminded her of her grandfather.

-------  
Koichi sat on the futon in Koji's room, reading a book he'd borrowed from his brother. It was the first _Harry Potter_—a title that surprised him. Koji didn't seem to be the kind of person who'd enjoy the fantasy genre at all. Then again, he didn't seem like the religious type either, but he was.

It was so hard to concentrate on this book. He'd read it a few times before and, like just about every _Potter_ fan, was anticipating the fifth in the saga. But he just couldn't get into the storyline as much as he usually could. He was still somewhere in the part where Hagrid first explained to Harry about his parents and his being a wizard when Koji looked at him from over the pages of his own book.

"You don't have to keep this up, you know," he commented.

"What?"

"How you're just trying to keep me company."

"What makes you say that?"

"The fact that you haven't turned the page for fifteen minutes."

Koichi was about to retort to that, but he had nothing in his defense. Koji's comment wasn't even an exaggeration; he had been on the same page, reading the same paragraph for a very long time now. But instead, Satomi suddenly appeared in the doorway to interrupt the uncomfortable moment.

"I'm going grocery shopping," she announced. "I didn't realize we were so low on everything. Koichi, do you want to come with me?"

"Well…" he stammered, unsure how to respond. He didn't want to be rude, but he didn't want to leave Koji alone right now either.

"Go on," Koji urged. "Better that one of us gets out of the house than neither of us. Go." There was an insistence in his voice that implied he wanted a little time to himself.

_Yet another thing I've screwed up,_ Koichi thought. _Now Koji's sick of me. _Aloud, he said, "All right, Satomi."

She smiled. "Just let me get my purse and then we'll go. Koji, we'll bring something home for dessert."

"All right," he answered flatly, still not happy that he had to stay inside all day. But he closed his book and got up to follow them out. "I'll lock the door for you."

"Thank you," Satomi replied, detouring to get her purse. Once again, the twins were left alone to talk.

"Koji, I…" Koichi hesitated, trying to think of the right thing to say. Koji looked at him, puzzled.

"What is it?"

"Koji, I'm sorry that I've just been managing to piss you off," he whispered. Somehow, it felt a whole lot more comforting to confess if he wasn't even sure the person he was talking to could hear him. "I…I don't know. But after the Digital World, my dreams, your fall…I just want to know that you're going to be okay, that nothing's going to go wrong. You've been scaring me too with the way _you're _not always acting _your_self."

"I know," he answered, also in a whisper. "I don't know what's been going on with me lately. Even before I fell, things have been weird: my sicknesses and all that. A couple of times, I've forgotten things or did them completely wrong. And it's not normal, not the way it should be. When those things happen, it's like I'm lost in a daze or something. So I'm worried too about what's wrong with me."

"I guess that helps somehow," Koichi admitted. "It's comforting to know that we know what each other is thinking or feeling because we're going through the same. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's like we're still connected. What I feel, you feel, and the other way around." Koji nodded his understanding.

"All ready to go?" Satomi checked. How long had it taken her to find her purse? Koichi wondered if she'd purposely done it so they could talk about this problem. He looked at her, and she had that knowing smile again. She was always doing this, helping him out a little at a time. It was confusing but still comforting at the same time. But he just nodded and followed her out of the door while Koji shut it behind them.

-------  
For the most part, Kousei Minamoto was a patient man. He had to be, having raised a son alone for about seven or so years before remarrying. He'd put up with a child's fevers, broken bones, chickenpox, and random other afflictions without ever losing his temper. Koji had taken a lot of that patience from him and learned to accept matters as they truly were. That patience in Kousei was usually infallible, but this day, he could only hope that his sons had enough of it. His own reserves were running low.

This was the very last bit of paperwork for a very important case he'd been hard at work on. It was finally over, and he could take some time off to take care of his injured son—no matter how much Koji argued against it. His boss knew of the incident and allowed him to end work early each night just as long as he finished his work. This was just wrap-up, and he could go home soon, just as soon as the clock hit four o'clock. But the clock had not moved in the past twenty minutes, or so it seemed.

Kousei let out a sigh of exasperation as he drummed his fingers against his desk and tried his hardest to finish writing. It was just the same as being in school again, waiting desperately for the day to end so he could be set free. Never once had he felt that way about work. But this was the first time he hadn't been home to watch Koji, so worry turned to anxiety, which turned to temporary adult attention-deficit disorder. He gritted his teeth and cursed lightly under his breath. All of this frustration over a stupid piece of paper that he couldn't seem to concentrate enough to write on.

"Minamoto," a coworker addressed, seeing how close the man was coming to having his gaze transfixed into a permanent glare, "how about you go home now? The boss will probably let you go since your kid's sick."

"Thanks." His voice still carried some anger, but there was definite relief in it.

"Hey, how old is he anyway?"

"Still in sixth grade."

"Hmm, weird. How sick is he? I'd think that an eleven-year-old could handle himself at home."

"He had a bad fall from one of our balconies. He's not supposed to get out of bed."

"Ah. Well, I hope he gets better."

"Thank you." Not wanting to discuss any more, he discreetly informed his boss that he was leaving and headed out the door.

The drive home was relaxing in comparison to the office. Because he'd left before rush hour, he managed to arrive home quickly without having to speed down the roads. He parked the car in the driveway upon coming home and loosened his tie as he fit his key into the lock. One thing he and his family were always careful about was locking the door even when they were home; it didn't feel right otherwise. This fact imbedded in his mind, he was surprised to find the door locked when he tried his key. A sickening dread filled the pit of his stomach as he turned the key again, this time unlocking, and opened the door.

"Koji? Satomi? Koichi?" he called in fear. He could hear the shaking in his voice. If someone unwelcome was in here, there was no way to fool the intruder into thinking the man had unsinkable courage. But the knot in his stomach loosened once he saw Koji come down the stairs, limping somewhat but otherwise fine.

"Dad, is something wrong?" he checked.

"Nothing," Kousei lied. Relief flooded his mind from the knowledge that at least his son was all right. "But you have to remember to lock this door, Koji. Where's—"

"I did."

Kousei blinked. Was it possible he'd made a mistake and turned the key the wrong way? No, he distinctly remembered the sound of what he'd thought was the door unlocking. "No, you left it unlocked. It's okay, but next time be more care—"

"I couldn't have." There was a trace of fearful denial in his voice. "I was right here when Satomi and Koichi left to go shopping, and I closed the door and locked it. I _know_ I did." Kousei gave him a probing look.

"Are you absolutely sure?"

Koji lowered his head. He didn't remember, but he was positive he had done it.

"Koji, it's okay—"

"No it's not. Something's wrong. Something's wrong with me." His father reached out to comfort him, but he turned and ran to his room, lying under the covers of his bed in frustration. He'd never really hidden from the monsters under his bed in that way when he was younger, but now it was all he could do. He tried to ignore the unhealthy palpitating of his heart in his ears as he shut his eyes on the world. If he just continued to ignore it, sooner or later it would all go away.

-------  
Koichi and Satomi casually strolled through the grocery store, picking up items they needed and placing them in the cart. Anyone who passed them by saw merely a mother and son, never once realizing that there was something deeper than the outer surface. They never suspected that the woman was the boy's brother's stepmother and that it was an oddity in itself that these two were spending time together. They would never think that the only thing that brought them both here was the fact that the brother was home in bed from head trauma. They never knew.

Satomi picked out some peppers in the produce section while Koichi weighed some onions. He felt nervous somehow, like there was something unsettled between them, but he didn't know what it was. And it really wasn't his place to intrude on her thoughts; Koji had more right to do that, not him.

"Koichi?" she asked. He jumped in surprise and nearly dropped the onions.

"Yes?"

"I've noticed that you've been very worried about Koji lately."

"He _is _my brother. And I only just met him."

"I know. I can't blame you. In fact, I'm worried myself. I've never seen him so…difficult. Normally he'd just grudgingly put up with everything, but now he's acting so strange. Has he mentioned anything to you?"

"Well, actually, yes. He said that even he's not sure what's wrong. But he doesn't like it."

"Well, at least that's one good thing. He's talking about it, which means that he's not going to hide anything from us. A couple of years ago—even a couple of _months_ ago, he wouldn't have been this open. You've been doing him some good, Koichi. You're doing us all some good."

"It's not enough."

"Maybe it is," she suggested, looking at him directly. "You can't cure his illness, but you're someone he can talk to a lot more easily than with Kousei or me. He's never really had anyone like that before in his life. I'm glad that you two finally met, despite all your hardships and heartbreak."

"So am I," he commented quietly. For all he'd gone through, he could still honestly say the same thing he had when Lucemon scanned his image data: "I have no regrets." It was rather odd though that it took a talk with his stepmother as he was weighing some onions for him to realize that.

-------  
Jeri opened the door to her small one-room apartment in Chinatown. All it really consisted of was a single space separated into a kitchen and living/sleeping area with a bathroom and a closet separated from the main room. Once she closed and locked the door, she began to change out of her school uniform and into her single plain yellow dress. She had about half an hour before her shift at _Shao Pai Long_ started, so she could afford to be comfortable.

In the bathroom, she braided her hair and tied it into the two buns on the sides of her head, allowing the rest of the braid to trail out. She then sprayed hairspray to keep it in that style before she sat down on her sad lonely futon in the middle of the seemingly big room. The futon wasn't even in the center; it was pushed against the wall. There was no window, so light came from the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling. The false white light reflected off the hardwood floors that stretched from her futon wall to the door while water dripped from the faucet in the kitchen-space. This was not home. Home was an apartment above a small traditional Japanese eatery. Home was a five-year-old little brother running around with frequent visitor Calumon while stepmother Shizue smiled and watched. Home was a roof where Leomon once sat and told her of her lion's heart, where she sat months later trying to live as her father silently looked on. Home was a dog sock-puppet, a picture of her mother, and a broken yellow digivice. Home was somewhere she could never return to.

She sighed, the echo from the empty walls making it sound louder than it was. She longed for little Masahiko running around with her puppet, begging her to play with him. She longed for Calumon's insistence, mirroring the little boy's. She longed for her stepmother's kindness and her father's tough love. She didn't have any of that here. What _did_ she have?

Another person inside her mind, wanting to kill everything and everyone that didn't match her logic. A displaced American girl trying to understand her while at the same time trying to stop her. A boy who shared the pain of growing up without a mother and struggling to adjust to a stepmother. His brother, who was trying to make amends for all he had done while he was just trying to grow up. The echoes of her past, haunting her in all her waking moments and possessing her in her sleep.

An empty apartment with a single futon, a long stretch of floor, and high walls that imprisoned her. Fake light, no window. A bathroom and a kitchen. A dwelling, not a home. No family, no friends, nothing.

"Leomon says everyone has their own destiny," she murmured, quoting her own words from the past. "Maybe mine is to be alone…"

-------  
Upon arriving back at the Minamoto house, Koichi shuffled past his father in order to reach the room he and Koji shared. There under the comforting safety of the covers of his bed Koji lay hidden. Hiding from what, though?

"Koji, what happened?" Koichi asked. "Is everything okay?"

"I forgot to lock the door."

"What?" That was all? That was all he was upset about?

"I stood right there as you and Satomi left. I closed the door and could have sworn I locked it. But I didn't. I forgot something that stupid."

"It's no big deal."

"Yes, it is. For me. Koichi, I was in that daze again, my thinking confused. Nothing else was on my mind or anything. I just forgot, somehow reasoning that it was all right not to lock the door as long as it was closed. Dad nearly had a heart attack when he came home."

"He did?" There was a movement under the blankets that had to be a nod.

"I guess he thought someone broke in on us. I know, it's not likely, but he was afraid. And it's all my fault."

"Koji…"

"Don't even try to argue. You know just as well as I do that this isn't normal for me. Something's wrong, Koichi. Just face it." His harsh tone stung. Koichi decided that it would be a lot easier to face his father than to cope with his brother right now, so he turned toward the door.

"Koji, I know that wasn't you speaking. It's just stress over whatever's making you act so different. But you have to know that I will deal with it. You have to too." And he left, never once having actually looked at Koji underneath the sheets. It was fortunate that he didn't. It would have been all too disturbing for him to look and see tears once again present on his brother's face.

**"Echo" is a short piano piece in the Japanese release of the _Fiction _CD. The other two songs exclusive to the Japanese release, "Lullaby" and "Red Rose," will be featured in the next chapter. And don't everyone get excited that I included _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone_ in this; I didn't really know any Japanese children's novels, so I played it safe with an international title. And the scene with Jeri in her apartment came from random moments in _Serial Experiments Lain._**** Till the next!**


	9. Open Your Heart

_"Open your heart_  
_Your every emotion  
__Open your heart  
__For tears and rejection."  
__.hack/SIGN: "Open Your Heart"_

_Recommended Music:  
__Snow/Father and son—"Open Your Heart"  
__War game—"Red Rose" (from Fiction Japanese release)  
__Café encounter—"Lullaby," any version (from Fiction Japanese release)  
__Distracted questions—"To Nowhere"_

Fiction  
Track 09: "Open Your Heart"

Koichi kicked off the blankets of his futon as he fought against himself in yet another nightmare. He was Velgemon this time, and he was flying toward a badly injured Koji with the intent of impaling him with his sharp talon. When this had happened in real life, Ophanimon had prevented this from happening by unlocking his memories of the life he'd lived prior to receiving the corrupted Spirits of Darkness. There was no Ophanimon now to save Koji, and Koichi/Velgemon felt his talon plunge into Koji's body. Velgemon rejoiced, Koichi raged, and Koji just died. The evolution broke, dropping Koichi to his feet just a little farther away from his brother. He ran desperately to reach him, where Koji could barely hold onto a few breaths.

"Koji? Koji?" He watched his brother intently, trying to see if there was any hope that he could live any longer. But there was no such hope. Koji tried to say something, but Koichi could not hear him or read his lips. He then closed his eyes and faded from sight…

A sudden kick to his arm woke him up quickly. He jumped off of his pillow to a cold that even rivaled IceDevimon's attacks. In a single instant, he grabbed his blankets from his lap and wrapped them around himself as he looked up at Koji—also wrapped in a thick blanket, but wearing a half-confused expression on his face.

"You're an interesting sleeper," he commented. "You don't notice the cold until you wake up, and then it's like you've just walked into a frozen wasteland."

"_You_ kicked me?" Koichi asked in surprise. And after all the tears he'd been crying in these dreams…

"It was the only way I could wake you up. I tried yelling, I started throwing things, I tried shaking you. Eventually, I just tried the only thing that worked."

"Still, did you have to resort to kicking?"

"Whatever works. Anyway, Dad's trying to get the heater started. It went out last night, so we might need to get it repaired."

"Why's it so cold?"

Koji motioned to the balcony window. "Take a look for yourself."

Koichi blinked once before getting up and staring out the window to a thick layer of white powder all over the suburban area of Yokohama. Young children were already getting out of bed and running outside to play in the cold flakes that had fallen from the sky that night. Frost covered the windows and more snow coated roofs. It was something unlike anything he'd seen in the city limits.

"How did it get so cold that it could snow?" Koichi questioned. "I mean, Tokyo and urban Yokohama don't get like _this_."

"It happens every winter," Koji explained. "But usually in January or February. It's a lot colder this winter than others."

"And it's a lot colder without the heater," their father added behind them. Both boys turned to see him standing outside the door. "You'd better get dressed. Someone's coming in soon to fix the heat." Without either he or Koichi acknowledging the other, he left. Koji merely sighed and sat down on his bed.

"I might as well be outside than in here," he commented. "It's not like keeping me out of the snow is going to get me better any sooner."

"Are you feeling better than you did yesterday?" Koichi checked.

"Yeah, but just a little restless."

"Again?"

"I want to get out of here. I'm tired of being stuck in the house all day. I need to get out of here. It might be the key to keeping me from getting so depressed and tired again."

Koichi momentarily looked out the window at the children already playing in the snow. All of them were free and happy and had no idea what it was like for the people trapped inside their houses. "Hey, Koji," he called, an idea formulating in his head.

"Yeah?"

"What if you tried to take Akemi for a walk? She _is_ hard to handle, isn't she?"

"It won't work. Dad won't let me out of here for anything. Not until I'm healed."

"But…"

"Forget it. It's just not going to work."

Koji was slipping into that depressive mood again. Koichi could see the deadness in his eyes beginning to set in. The part of him that was a brother took command of his mind and sent him downstairs. Satomi was still asleep under the warm covers in the main bedroom, so only Kousei was in the kitchen to make breakfast.

"Dad?" he asked.

His father turned around from the kitchen window in surprise. That sudden bravery in Koichi faltered and cracked the minute his father's eyes fell on him. He searched desperately for the question he was going to ask, but cowardice wiped his memory clean.

_No,_ he urged himself. _I can't let Koji get as bad as he did yesterday. I'm the only one right now who can help him._

"Dad, can Koji and I take Akemi for a walk?" he questioned, keeping his eyes transfixed on the floor. "It won't be for too long, and we'll come back the minute it's too cold." Using a tremendous deal of effort, he lifted his gaze to see his father's face, expecting some degree of anger. What he got was a surprise in itself.

His father was laughing. And somehow, Koichi found himself laughing gently too. They both knew why they were sharing this spontaneous moment of humor: After all these months and years when they'd buried themselves in fear of the other, it was all pointless in the end. It was just that simple to strike up a conversation, to discover any similarities between them. If they'd known it was that easy, they wouldn't have needed for Koji to hurt himself those few weeks ago.

Koji and Satomi stood just outside the kitchen, the laughter having aroused their curiosity. Both wore their warmest blankets as cloaks to try and preserve heat. But the sight of this near miracle, the encounter between father and son that had finally taken place, was enough to chase away some of the winter cold.

-------  
Soft snowflakes fell around them from garden trees. Their breath crystallized into vapor as they breathed the cold air. But Koji and Koichi were fine with the weather. It represented a release from that room full of sickness and depression. It was the first stage of healing.

Akemi barked at the blue shadows left behind on the snow as the boys walked her down the block. Gray clouds in the sky broke off white flakes of snow on a landscape of nature's browns and blacks and houses of all sorts of colors. The muted colors were a welcome sight to Koji after his weeks in bed and his close encounter with death. He took a deep breath, smelling the clean scent of the snow. His room had begun to feel and smell stuffy and musty from the spiritual condition of the two boys sharing it. This was all so foreign now; his last trek through a snow-covered field had been in the Digital World. The cold didn't bother him so much now that he'd been in a room that was too warm for so long.

A snowball exploded on his back, waking him from his thoughts and nearly making him choke on the cough drop he sucked to retain moisture in his throat. A second one, badly aimed, flew over his shoulder and landed on Akemi, who barked loudly and shook herself off. He stopped walking and looked back at Koichi, who held another icy projectile in gloved hands.

"That was as easy as hitting Crusadermon back in the Digital World," he commented. "I thought you liked being ready for surprise attacks."

"Oh really?" Koji responded, dropping the leash and scooping up a handful of snow to throw at his brother. His hit Koichi in the face. "And as I recall, your last hit threw her aim off and she ended up shooting you instead of me."

"So that's how you repay me for saving your life?" Koichi joked, throwing yet another fist-sized grenade at him. Koji followed with another snowball.

And so it continued for several minutes. Koichi would throw one or two snowballs, and Koji would retaliate. Or Koji would throw a few, and Koichi did the same in response to the attack. They ignored Akemi's barks and attempts to interrupt the war game while frozen missiles flew through the air between the brothers. All around them, younger and more carefree children dropped their winter toys and began identical wars, fighting for the sole principle of fun. They had no idea that this was in actuality medicine to cure a melancholy that had infected both boys. That disease had driven them to madness, and madness in turn drove them to this. By the time they finally stopped, they were sweating under their thick clothes and panting from lack of breath. Their clothes were soaked, and their faces were red. Koichi had clumps of snow in his hair. Koji's bandana had slipped off his head when another grenade exploded in his face. They both looked absolutely ridiculous.

"Nobody finds out about this," Koji breathed.

"Agreed," Koichi replied.

They were tired from the physical exertion, but neither wanted to return to the house when they knew that someone would eventually come along and fix the broken heater. Instead, they chose to keep walking through the cold winter snow. Akemi jumped and barked excitedly, trying to incite another snowball war. But the twins had had enough of that and were content to just walking around Yokohama for a while before going home.

"Need something to drink?" Koichi checked once they reached a small café. It was a local shop—nothing internationally renowned—but its warm drinks and pastries were perfect for this cold winter day. Koji shook his head just as something caught his eye inside. He blinked and checked again.

"Isn't that Alice?" he asked, pointing to a pale blonde at a table farther from the window. Koichi leaned over to see.

"You're right. Wonder what she's doing here."

"Go find out," Koji suggested. "I'll stay out here with Akemi."

Koichi had no idea if some twisted part of his brother was trying to set him up with Alice, but he didn't care. The less time he had to spend around that dog—especially alone—the better. He entered and stripped off his coat and gloves before walking to Alice's table.

She sat at a table by herself, pouring over several printouts. She held her head in her hands with frustration as she examined every ounce of data she'd located at the library's computer. Frustrated tears threatened to spill from her eyes as all of her evidence proved to be closer and closer to a truth she didn't want to admit.

"Alice?" Koichi called. She jumped and stuffed all of her papers into a backpack.

"Hello, Koichi."

"Is something wrong?" he checked, trying to get a good look at her papers. Even when he did, it proved fruitless—it was all in English, and his grasp of the language was minimal at best.

"Nothing," she replied. "I just had to research something at the library and I decided to stop in here for an espresso."

"All the way here?" he questioned. "It's a long train ride from Shibuya. What are you really doing here?"

"I just needed to look something up," she insisted. "And I wanted to see how you and Koji were doing."

"Koji's outside right now," Koichi informed. "Dad finally let him out of the house."

"Is he well enough to be walking around in this weather?"

"According to him, yes. Plus the heater's broken, so there's no real difference in temperature. And we'd probably be in the repairman's way."

"Oh. So where are you going?"

"Just walking around for a while. Want to come with us?"

"Sure. I'll just get another coffee to bring with me."

She paid for another cup to go and put on her coat and gloves as she and Koichi headed out the door. Koji held carefully onto Akemi's leash as she tried to jump up on the newcomer.

"Be careful," Koichi warned, "she's easily excited." But to his surprise, Alice knelt beside the dog and began petting her gently. Akemi licked her face, making her laugh while the twins stared in absolute wonder.

"I didn't get to see you last time I was at Koji's," she commented to Akemi. "They take very good care of you, I see." When she was finished, she stood up, her face rosy from warmer emotions. "I've always loved dogs, maybe more now since I was partnered to Dobermon for that short time. Akemi somewhat reminded me of him." The boys were silent, afraid of saying anything that might offend her. In this silence, they resumed their walk.

"So, Koji, how are you?" she questioned.

"Better than before. It helps being out of the house. I think the confinement was what was depressing me and making me worse." She nodded distractedly.

"And you, Koichi?" she checked.

He fought off the uncomfortable rush of his hormones as he tried to answer the innocent question. Unfortunately, his voice squeaked at first when he replied, "I'm okay, I guess." She nodded again, and he favored her with a sympathetic look. It was obvious that something dreadful was on her mind, but he didn't feel right about asking what it was. "And, you Alice?" he managed to ask. Koji turned immediately at the highly concerned tone of his voice. But he resolved to remain out of this conversation and act merely as a neutral listener. None of this really concerned him anyway.

"I'm all right."

"What was it you were researching?" he questioned.

"It's nothing important," Alice answered. "It's just something I wanted to look up, and my suspicions are probably wrong."

"Suspicions on what?"

"Nothing." Her voice was becoming increasingly more exasperated.

"Alice, if there's something wrong, I want to help."

"There's nothing you can do. If I'm wrong, there's no problem, but if I'm right… If I'm right, then nothing you can do will be able to change anything."

Koichi stared at her in horror while the words tested Koji's neutrality. "Does this have anything to do with what's on your mind now?" There was an awkward silence. "Well?"

"Yes," she replied finally. "But it's nothing I want to worry you with."

"Is there something wrong with you?"

"No. Not with me."

"Dolphin then?" Koji had finally chosen to voice his concern. Dolphin had proven to be a good friend and confidant. If there was something wrong with that man, it would hurt just as much as if there was a problem with the other Legendary Warriors.

"No, Grandfather's fine," she assured. Her voice was inexplicably softer now, as though she'd forced herself to control her temper. "It's nothing you really need to worry about now. Or ever, if I'm wrong." Needing a quick change of subject, she questioned, "How are things going with your family?"

Koji decided to answer while Koichi sorted through conflicting emotions. "Koichi and Dad finally confronted each other today. It started with a question and ended with them laughing."

"That's great," she answered sincerely. "Are you finally feeling less afraid of your father, Koichi?"

"Yeah," he replied, his emotions finally conquered. "I felt kind of silly, actually, when I stood there trying not to make eye contact. It was just so easy to talk, and we'd been avoiding it for so long."

"I told you," Koji informed. Koichi laughed a little.

"And I should have listened. But I was so scared. And of what? Just a bunch of lies Cherubimon fed me that I still believed."

"It's not easy to erase old fears," Alice philosophized. "All of us have something that still scares us from the past. But sometimes when we confront them, we feel less of the fear."

Koichi shivered suddenly at the memory of his fall at the Shibuya train station and his near repeat on the office building weeks earlier. There was no way he was ever going to conquer his acrophobia and climacophobia; he still hugged the banister tightly when he climbed the stairs to Koji's room. "Not always," he commented. "Some will always be with us." Koji nodded his agreement, having only recently observed his brother's phobias. But soon he covered his mouth and coughed.

"Time to go back," he informed once he could speak. "Dad won't be happy if I stay out any longer like this."

"Sorry for keeping you out longer than you expected," Alice apologized.

"It's all right."

"I'll see you both some other time," she informed. "Bye!"

They waved as they departed for home, Akemi leading them the whole way. But once they were gone from sight, Alice pulled out one of her papers and checked off something with a pen.

"'Coughing that produces white or pink blood-tinged phlegm,'" she read, shaking her head. She then looked in the distance to where they'd gone. _Please let me be wrong about this,_ she thought.

Akino: cheesy grin This chapter was started and finished in two days—a new record for me!

**Just like with last chapter, this features recommended music from the Japanese release of the CD. "Lullaby" is from the anime _Noir,_ and any of the three versions is workable: _Noir _English version, Japanese version, or the _Fiction _release. "Red Rose" is an up-tempo, almost Middle Eastern musical piece. As seen, there are more lighthearted "Markie and Chinny" moments, and in my style, that means that something terrible is about to take place****. Till the next!**


	10. Winter

_"I was always sad and cold_  
_All alone before we met  
__Now you've taught me how to find the light  
__Even in darkness of winter."  
__Original: "Winter"_

_Recommended Music:  
__Moving day—"Bridge 04"  
__Confusion/Family/Mission—"Mai"  
__Search/Emergency—"Limits"  
__Profiling—"Epitaph"  
__Learning to heal—"Winter"  
__Hospital drama—"Obsession," strings version_

Fiction  
Track 10: "Winter"

A little boy looked sadly at all of the boxes that cluttered his and his sister's room. It hurt him to know that he was leaving forever, forced to take refuge in a strange new world he'd only just heard of before going to bed the previous night. Yes, he could see his sister again, but it wasn't the same. Over there, there was no Calumon to keep him company when Jeri wasn't around to comfort his cries with her sock puppet. Over there, there were no Takato, Rika, and Henry with the hope that everything would work out while Mr. Yamaki shook his head in sadness. Over there, there were no Guilmon, Terriermon, Suzie, and MarineAngemon to play with him and Calumon in the park while Renamon, Guardromon, and Lopmon watched on with the other Tamers—Renamon because she was too mature for such games, Lopmon because she still held some of the dignity she held as a Deva, and Guardromon because there was a chance that he might inadvertently hurt the others. Over there, there was nothing familiar: just a girl named Alice who fought alongside a boy named Koichi in order to help Jeri.

Young Masahiko Katou sighed in depression and sat on a box of his toys. He was never coming back, not until Hypnos managed to figure out a safe way to bring everybody home. And even when they did, would Jeri want to come back? She had been very sad after the first D-Reaper incident; could she really believe that her friends had forgiven her betrayal? He got off the box and walked to the window, looking out over the same city Leomon and Jeri had watched prior to entering the Digital World. It felt only right that he stand there now, seeing the same sites and thinking the same thoughts that they had before they left for a strange new world. He fiddled with something soft in his pocket—Jeri's sock puppet, which he had rescued from being packed away. At first, it had scared him to no end; the creature with those empty button eyes had first been taken over by the D-Reaper and had pulled Jeri to her cruel destiny. But now, it was somehow comforting to run his hands over the felt and string that held it together, just as it had comforted him when Jeri was still there.

"Masahiko, are you ready?" his mother called.

No, he wanted to scream, but he couldn't. His body turned toward the door and began to walk away, but his gaze was still on the scenery outside. Did his new home have such beautiful sunsets as these? He didn't know, but he would soon.

And in the world that was soon to be his new home, in the midst of her shift at _Shao Pai Long_, Jeri Katou dropped a customer's order and clutched her head while patrons and other waitresses watched in fear.

"It's coming," she gasped before running out the door to avoid losing control in this of all places.

-------  
A mild depression and a tormenting suspicion loomed over Alice's head as she walked back home to Shibuya, obfuscating all of her carefully learned Japanese manners. Her saddened thoughts kept her from concentrating, and so she walked into the apartment without removing her shoes, as per the custom. She walked to the refrigerator to remove a can of soda when she noticed her grandfather talking to two adults and a young child. He saw her and observed her surprised expression.

"Alice, the Katous are going to be staying here for the night while the movers finish unloading everything into their new house," he informed. Her mouth was still slightly agape, and her eyes were still wide. "Don't tell me you forgot."

"I'm sorry, but I did, Grandfather. I was so wrapped up in everything that I completely forgot. I have to call Koichi and Koji to let them know."

"Go on ahead," he replied. "In the meantime, I'll finish explaining things to Mr. and Mrs. Katou."

As she walked over to the phone, Alice mentally chided herself for jumping to conclusions so quickly. _You just forgot something easily, too, _she scolded. _Koji's probably going through the same amount of stress, especially since it was so hard for his father and Koichi to meet. By now, everything should start going back to normal with him._ "Yeah," she whispered, trying to encourage that belief.

-------  
The dinner table at the Minamoto house was a lot livelier than usual that evening. For the first time ever, there were conversations with four participants instead of awkward and uncomfortable silences. There was a feeling of calm and ease in the kitchen that loosened tongues and heartstrings. Emotions were no longer confined, and discussions of every subject came up: politics, current events, the fixed heater, and even the snowball fight the twins had sworn to keep secret.

"…And then all the kids in the neighborhood joined in," Koichi continued, surprising even himself with his ease at talking to his father. "Before long, none of us knew who we were supposed to be fighting."

"That reminds me," Koji interrupted. "Dad, I'm going to need a new pair of boots this winter. When I put mine on, they were tight."

Kousei looked at him in surprise. "I just bought you those last winter. You grew out of them in a year?" Koji nodded. "All right. We'll go shopping next weekend, after we finish paying the repairman."

"Are you feeling okay, Koji?" Satomi checked, seeing him begin to nod off.

"Yeah. I'm just tired—probably from everything we did today. I'm going to go to bed early."

"I don't blame you," Koichi agreed. "That was a very weird day we had. I'll probably turn in early too."

As if to contradict him, Alice's call came through at just that moment, informing him of the arrival of Jeri's family.

"We need to go to Chinatown now," she informed. "Grandfather's convinced that this may be the only way to help her."

"All right," Koichi replied somewhat reluctantly. "I'll be there as soon as I can." He hung up the phone and turned regretfully to his family. "Alice needs me to meet her in Chinatown. She thinks she has a way to help Jeri." That serene feeling in the room vanished to be replaced with unrest. "I…I have to go…"

"Then go," Kousei advised. Koichi uneasily nodded before taking his jacket and borrowing Koji's boots and running out the door.

Had he a moment to think, he would have remembered that he and Koji shared the same clothing and shoe size. The boots he wore, Koji's, fit perfectly on him, though Koji said that they were too tight. And had he a moment to reflect, he would have realized that that indicated that something was out of the ordinary.

Meanwhile, in Shibuya, new worries replaced Alice's fears. She pulled on her own winter things before securing her knife into a pocket. Little Masahiko watched her.

"Are you going to hurt my sister with that?" he asked.

"Not if I can help it, no," she answered.

"Then can you do me a favor?"

"What is it?"

"Can you give her this?" He gave her a crude, handmade yellow sock puppet. "It's Jeri's. She left it behind when she came here." Alice looked up from the toy to the little boy's tear-streaked face. "She always used to play with it for me when I was scared or sad. I know she's sad now, so maybe it will make her feel better like it did for me."

Alice smiled softly and thanked him before placing the puppet in her coat pocket. Then, with a quick goodbye, she ran out the door to Chinatown.

-------  
Koichi was nearly out of breath when he reached _Shao Pai Long_, having run without stopping from the train station. All he wanted to do was finish this quickly so that he could go home and enjoy the rest of the night with his family. The last thing he wanted to see was a scared Chinese-Japanese waitress come up to him, asking, "You're one of Mishio's friends, right?"

It took him a second to remember that Jeri went by that name at work. "Yes. Why? Is something wrong?"

"Yes, she just ran out of here in terror. I was hoping you knew what was bothering her?"

He suddenly felt all of his food violently slosh around in his stomach. If not for his knowledge that he had to act quickly, he would have thrown up right there and then. But he took a deep breath and replied, "I'm not sure, but I'll find out. Where did J—er, Mishio go?"

"I don't know. I saw her run maybe to the right, I'm not sure."

He sighed. It was just his luck that nobody had spotted Jeri. "Okay," he answered. "I'll try and see if I can find her. Listen, if a girl named Alice comes in—blonde, American, dressed all in black—let her know that's where I went."

"Oh, yes, your girlfriend," she remembered while Koichi's face took up a vibrant red hue. He tried desperately to mutter, "She's not my girlfriend," but it wouldn't come out. "Don't worry," the waitress added. "I'll let her know." Koichi managed a flustered bow of thanks and ran like a madman out of the restaurant. Of all the things that he'd faced in his life, that had to be the most embarrassing.

He didn't think to wait for Alice. He just ran to find Jeri. If he had just waited twenty more minutes instead of running around the city, things would have been a lot easier for the American. Upon hearing the waitress's story, she sighed.

"Thank you, Lian," she replied.

"Don't be mad at him or anything," she warned.

"I'm not. I just wish he'd have waited a little longer," Alice explained. "I'll have to look for him later. Right now, I need to check Mishio's apartment. She left me a set of keys just in case anything happened."

"All right. Please find out what's wrong with her."

"I will, don't worry. First, can you show me where I can find a phone?"

Once she got to the telephone, she placed in a call with her grandfather to update him on the situation. Next, she called the Minamoto house, guessing correctly that Koichi hadn't informed his family yet of what was happening.

"…But as soon as I look around Jeri's apartment, I'll try to find Koichi," she assured.

"All right, thank you," Kousei replied, hanging up the phone and walking upstairs to tell Koji. "Koji, are you awake?" His son lay motionless on the bed, his eyes closed. He must have been tired to fall asleep that quickly, but this was something he wouldn't want to have to wait until morning to hear. "Koji, wake up." He tried shaking him gently, then a little more strongly, but still nothing could wake him up. That was the first signal that something was terribly wrong. He quickly checked Koji's pulse and breathing to find both nearly non-existent. "Satomi, call for medics now!" he cried as he pulled his son to the floor.

"What? What's wrong?" she asked, running into the room.

"I don't know, but Koji's not breathing and his heart's not beating. I need to know how to do CPR now."

She quickly grabbed the cell phone off of the desk and dialed for emergency help. The operator on the other end was very insistent on directly instructing Kousei in CPR, so Satomi was forced to hand over the phone and watch helplessly. Finally, after what seemed like endless compressions and breaths, Koji's breathing and heart rate were back to normal. Pain from the forceful chest compressions woke him up, and he stared at his father and stepmother in complete confusion.

"Dad? Satomi?" he asked in a daze. "What happened? Why am I on the floor?"

"Just stay there for now," Satomi instructed, kneeling next to him and propping up his head with a pillow. "An ambulance is on the way."

"What?"

"Koji, don't worry about anything," she warned. "Everything's going to be okay." She wanted to believe it, as did her husband, but looking at the sudden fear conveyed on the boy's pale face completely disproved the assertion.

The ambulance didn't take long in coming. Paramedics bustled up the stairs and stretched out a gurney to place Koji on. It was the second time in a short period he'd had to go to the hospital. But this time, he was awake and alert enough to be in a severely afraid and depressed mood. He knew that this time, there was something extremely wrong with him.

In another part of the city, an unsuspecting Koichi stopped running as he felt the momentary death of something inside of him. For a moment, he felt empty and hurt, like a part of him had just been severed off. But to further complicate matters, cold hands grabbed him and pulled him up into the never-ending dusk sky.

-------  
Alice stood alone in Jeri's apartment, half-frustrated and half-horrified by the plainness of it. There were no pictures, no personal artifacts that could deem this place a home. It was as if it was merely a place to settle until she could come home. But frustration came with the lack of content that kept the D-Reaper's intents hidden from the young detective.

_What is she up to?_ Alice asked herself, carefully investigating and scrutinizing every last minute detail. There was a futon placed up against the wall. The bathroom contained hairspray and a brush among the necessities. The closet contained only a yellow dress, some towels, undergarments, and a school uniform. The only light inside came from the white fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling. Very little food was in the refrigerator, only enough to sustain a young girl for a week.

"She asked me to help," she muttered. "Now what could be here that can tell me where she is and what she's planning?"

She sat on the floor and pulled the puppet out of her pocket, looking at it intently as though she expected it to declare Jeri's whereabouts. It was hard for her to believe that such an ugly creature could offer so much comfort to Jeri's little brother. But it was soft and familiar, able to frighten away the nightmares that came for him. Jeri didn't have any of that. The only comfort she could find was in a curled up fetal position on her futon, judging by the indentation, where she probably cried herself to sleep. The D-Reaper was all that was familiar to her, but she didn't want to have to remember that part of her past. Here in this world, nobody understood her. Koji's past was the closest to hers, but that was where the understanding ended. She had essentially cut off all contact with him after she'd scanned through his memories. The only one she was interested in—or the D-Reaper was, for that matter—was Koichi.

And there it was, blaringly obvious in front of her eyes. Never had Koji been the target, but Koichi. Fears combined with theories and served as the explanation to everything.

It had never been a life-granting ability Koji had, or else he would have displayed it for cases other than Koichi. It had been a sacrifice of some of his own life force, aided by Ophanimon. As a result, Koji became more susceptible to illnesses, especially to the one Alice feared. Koichi was the only one with any discernable power, and that was why the D-Reaper had been so intent on targeting only him, less so than Alice or Koji.

"I've got to find him!" she realized, bursting out of the apartment, the puppet clenched in her fist. But still, she had no idea where to go until she looked up in the sky, where the white crescent moon shone over the _Shao Pai Long_ restaurant. She didn't need to see two shadows on top of the roof to know where to look. Everything pieced together perfectly as she stared there and ran.

-------  
Koichi's knees shook dangerously as he stood atop the semi-circular building that housed _Shao Pai Long._ He felt so stupid for not realizing sooner that the best place to hide was the last place he'd look. Jeri stood some feet behind him as he clung to the fence that would hopefully keep him from the fall that could have happened on the last rooftop he'd visited.

"Acrophobia is illogical," Jeri—no, the D-Reaper—commented. "There is nothing to fear from height, only of the effects of the impact of the ground after a fall."

"Why would someone such as you be interested in logic?" he demanded, angry and afraid. "All you want is chaos."

"That may be what you call it." He turned his head in shock to look at her. "Humans and Digimon are so fragile that any change in their lifestyles is chaotic."

"What do you mean?"

"Humans desire order, complete logic, but when they receive it, all they can call it is chaos." The blood drained from his face. "Because of its consequences, I must also call this order 'chaos.'"

"No…" he denied, hearing Lucemon's same arguments in his mind. The past couldn't be repeating itself!

"All living beings desire some kind of structure in their lives to ensure that they will survive and evolve. Someone tried to give them that gift. I intend to do the same."

"We defeated Lucemon and stopped his tyranny!" Koichi shouted, whipping around angrily. "What makes you think you'll succeed when my brother, our friends, and I know how to stop this?"

The D-Reaper's blank, dead eyes connected with his own living ones. He felt cold.

"Initiating memory scan. Subject: Kimura, Koichi."

Everything he'd seen and done during the battles with Lucemon and the Royal Knights filled his skull, forcing him to grab his head in pain and stagger about wildly. He'd never felt anything so painful before in his life; it was as if the D-Reaper had ripped open his cranium and was clawing at his brain as she exorcised his memories. He finally collapsed to his knees at the end, breathing heavily and sweating. The D-Reaper watched him with a mirthless grin.

"What is it?" he questioned once he felt like he could talk again. "What are you smiling about?"

"There is one mistake that Lucemon made that cannot come about again. He failed to destroy the Spirits of Darkness before you gave them to Koji." Koichi's eyes widened with terror. He knew what was coming, and he could not stop it. "You no longer have the Spirits, Messenger Koichi Kimura, so there is no reason for me to fail."

The distance between them shortened into nothing as she grabbed him by the neck and pressed him between the concrete roof and the fence. Her cold fingers tightened around his neck as he felt less and less able to breathe, and darkness swam in front of his eyes—darkness that was pierced only by a light from within his blood.

_Both light and darkness in me…_ he recognized. _But I don't understand. Did the Light pass into me from Koji's tears?_ His windpipe constricted even more this time, quieting his mind in a futile attempt to conserve oxygen. After everything that had happened, this was how it was going to end. He'd failed in everything, in saving Jeri, in protecting Koji, in helping Alice… That knowledge spurred unsolicited tears of regret that slowly made their way down his face. He didn't know that currently, Alice was racing toward him while Koji sat in a hospital room while doctors gave an analysis of his latest X-rays. He didn't know that both of them could see his light and darkness sweeping past them, from the brightly lit stairwell Alice dashed up to the dark and somber room in which Koji brooded. He just knew that he wasn't going to see them ever again and that soon they were going to be completely different people that he would never know even if he could live to see them again. Heavier tears fell and combined with those nearly frozen on his cheeks—one on each side. One was light, the other darkness. These two tears landed on the D-Reaper's hand and burned with all the fury of a firestorm. She tried to maintain her hold on him, but it became too difficult as the Light and Darkness within him turned against her. She was forced to pull away, allowing ample time for Alice to throw her to the ground and attach several electrodes to her body. She convulsed madly, screaming as the D-Reaper and Jeri were agonizingly separated. Koichi tried to catch his breath as he watched the dreadful sight. Finally, the screaming ceased, and the electrodes fell dormant. Jeri sat up in extreme remorse, her hair pulled free from the buns and concealing her face.

"It's over," Alice breathed.

Finally.

-------  
It was a long walk back to Shibuya, even with the aid of the train. Koichi was silent almost the entire time, trying to recover from the shock his body, mind, and soul had gone through. Jeri just kept her head down and avoided all conversation. All in all, it was a very uncomfortable trip for Alice, who felt like she needed to break the ice.

"Are you okay?" she checked. Her voice sounded so strange in the veil of silence that surrounded them. Koichi nodded. "What I mean is, are you feeling okay? Not dizzy or sick or—"

"No."

"I see." She settled into the morose quiet for a moment. "What happened with you back there was… I don't know how to describe it. What was it?"

"I don't know."

Silence again. She tried once more. "Are you afraid of something?" He didn't answer, so she turned her attention to Jeri.

"Your brother gave me something to give to you," she informed, taking the puppet out of her pocket while causing the knife to slip out. Koichi reached down to grab the weapon and placed it in his own pocket for safekeeping. "He hoped it would help you feel better." She placed the puppet in Jeri's hands. The dejected girl merely held it and looked at it in silence. Alice sighed. It would do them all some good to get home.

Not much longer later, they arrived at the McCoys' apartment in east Shibuya. Alice and Koichi guided Jeri to the couch, where her father and stepmother held her in a sorrowful embrace. Dolphin, meanwhile, watched sternly from the kitchen, holding the mobile phone.

"Grandfather, is something wrong?" Alice questioned.

"Yes there is, Alice. I need to take you and Koichi to the hospital."

Koichi awoke from his sullen daze. "Is it Koji?"

Dolphin lowered his head. "I can't really say anything yet. But yes, something happened to him while you were gone." Visible signs of rage were building in Koichi, but Dolphin held his hand to keep him from interrupting. "Don't blame yourself; it's nothing you could have helped with. Koji just stopped breathing earlier, so they brought him to the hospital to find out what's the matter. Anything they've learned they'd rather share in person."

"Oh God," Koichi moaned, bringing his hands to his head. Alice drew him into a hug; it was the only thing that felt appropriate. Dolphin remained expressionless, but only to be the strong adult the kids needed right now.

"Mr. Katou, can you handle things for now?" he asked.

"Yes," the man answered gruffly, also trying to keep up the façade of strength. "And thank you."

Dolphin nodded and followed his granddaughter and Koichi outside. Masahiko merely held Jeri's hand and slipped his small hand into the puppet, hoping that this time he could be the one to make the nightmares go away.

-------  
Koichi remembered feeling oddly numb when he walked into Koji's room in the hospital. His father and Satomi were holding back tears as best they could while explaining everything to Alice and Dolphin. But he didn't hear their words. He just saw Koji reclined in bed. He didn't see how miserable his brother looked, or if he did, he didn't acknowledge it. He didn't even seem to recognize his surroundings as he simply gave a report on the night's events.

"We finally stopped Jeri," he informed. "Alice managed to get the electrodes on her and burned away the D-Reaper." Koji shrugged impassively. "It's all over now, you know. She's with her family. They'll take care of her."

A sigh. "Koichi…"

"It was strange though," he continued, completely ignoring his brother's attempts to tell the awful truth. "All this time, we thought she stood for chaos, but in reality, she just wanted order as much as Lucemon did. And I guess by killing me, the powers of light and darkness can fuse and I guess destroy the world so someone else can rebuild it."

"Koichi."

"I'm really not sure what it was, but somehow both powers were coming out of me. I can understand if there's still some of Darkness in me because of my Spirit, but there was Light in my bloodstream too. I guess it must have passed over when you were crying that day."

"Koichi!" The older twin flinched as the younger tried to get in a sitting position. "I'm dying."

Once again, Koichi felt cold, drained, hollow. His voice shook as he weakly accused, "You're kidding."

Mirthless laughter. "Koichi, you know I have no sense of humor."

Koichi suddenly began to lose all feeling in his legs. "What happened then?"

"Congestive heart failure, brought on by the stress of evolving I guess. It tore my heart muscle. That's why I've been so sick lately."

"But the coughing…"

"Left-side failure. It built up fluid in my lungs. Then my right side began to fail, and that's why my shoes have felt so tight. Edema—fluid building up in my body. My confusion was from changes in sodium levels, and less blood got to my digestive system, making me feel full or nauseous all the time. My heart kept beating quickly all the time in an effort to keep up pumping capability, but there wasn't enough for all of my muscles, so I kept getting tired all the time." His voice was choked. He'd been crying about this. For how long?

Koichi sank next to him on the bed. "So…what happened while I was gone…"

"Sudden cardiac arrest. A lot like what you had."

"Can't you get a transplant or something? People have survived this before."

"Whatever I put into you was part of my own life. I didn't have enough to keep for myself."

Koichi tightened his fists until his arms shook with the pressure. "Shut up."

"Koichi—"

"I said shut up!" He threw a punch directly at his brother, catching him completely off-guard. "All I asked you that day was to protect our world, and you had to go and screw the whole thing up. I never wanted you to give up your life just to bring me back. Who said I even _wanted_ to come back in the first place? All that's left for me now is just a half-life that I can't live all because I know that I'm only here because of _you_! I just asked for two simple things: save the world and visit Mom, and you couldn't even do _that _right!" He stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Alice had been ready to enter when she heard his ranting, but now she watched him in absolute surprise as he ran toward the men's room. Koji staggered out of the room, hunched over, a minute later.

"We have to stop him," he warned. "I'm afraid of what he's going to do."

**The scene with Alice in the apartment was mostly inspired by _The Pretender_ with elements of _The Profiler._ The idea of the D-Reaper standing for order was a suggestion from Lord Archive that managed to fit the theme of this story very well, replacing a rather bland climax. And information on congestive heart disease came from the American Heart Association, which supplied just about all the information in this fic. Supplemental info came from and my anatomy and physiology textbook. One more chapter to go. Till then!**


	11. Salva Nos

_"Grant us peace_  
_And save us from the enemy  
__Save us, God."  
__Noir: "Salva Nos"  
__(Translated from Latin by Gatti)_

_Recommended Music:  
__Heart attack/Promises—"Interlude"  
__Digital World reunion—"A Silent Life"  
__Sailing under the stars—"A Bit of Happiness"  
__Nightmare—"Salva Nos," Fiction version  
__Brother to brother/Death/True chaos—"Rain and Storm"  
__Funeral/"I cried too…that day"—"BT"_

Fiction  
Track 11: "Salva Nos"

Leaving the adults behind, the two ran for the restroom, Koji struggling to breathe the whole way. Inside, all the stalls were locked, forcing them to knock and check between the cracks in order to find their missing compatriot. Men gave them odd looks—Alice even odder—as they kept searching until finally they located him in the middle stall, holding a knife and bleeding. Quickly, they threw themselves on the door and broke it open, startling Koichi into stopping from cutting himself.

"Get away," he ordered.

"Koichi, what are you doing?" Alice questioned. His neck and wrists were soaked with blood, as though he'd been unsure of how much he needed to lose before he could finally die.

"Koji needs a new heart, and more importantly, the rest of his life force. I'm the only one who can provide both."

"Koichi…" she began in disbelief, trying to wrestle the knife away.

"Hypocrite," Koji accused, his lips and fingertips blue. He was holding onto his left arm tightly and trying to remain conscious despite the pain. "You said that you couldn't live knowing that I gave up my life to save you. Did you ever stop to think about what I felt? Did you?"

"Koji, calm down," Alice reasoned.

"Give it up, Koichi," he ordered. "There's no guarantee anyway that this will help." Pain in his chest soon worsened from a squeezing sensation to a feeling like the cavity was going to burst. He lost his footing and fell forward on them, very quickly approaching Death's gates.

"Someone get help!" Alice cried. "Our friend's having a heart attack! Somebody help!"

Koichi managed to lay Koji on the tile as they waited for someone to come by to help. Already, nurses and paramedics were trying to push him away as they brought in a defibrillator. This wasn't real—it _couldn't_ be. They'd planned to grow up together, facing everything that came with life. Koji couldn't die. This was all some grim fairytale in a storybook or something. It wasn't happening. But even with all of that denial running through his head, Koichi could see that this was no bedtime story, no tragic novel. His brother was dying. He would grow up alone. Koji was trying to say something to comfort him, something soundless that could barely escape his blue lips…

"Koji, please, remember our promise," Koichi whispered as he ignored all attempts to pull him away. "No final words."

Koji nodded in pain just before electrical volts went through his body. He soon lost consciousness after that. Sighs of relief swept the medical personnel, but Koichi couldn't share the sense of liberation. It was a painful dose of reality for him now that he knew that his brother was going to die, and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. All of a sudden, he felt very old, as if he'd done all of his growing in those few minutes of terror.

The fear and mounting stress that had been placed on him that day finally took its toll, mixing with blood loss to help him fall into the same dreamless sleep as his brother. It was to be the first and last time he was released from his nightmares.

-------  
Tomoko Kimura arrived soon enough to hear the bad news of her younger son's approaching death and her elder son's attempted suicide. Tears and angry shouts filled the lobby, where the adults had chosen to remain in order to avoid disturbing the boys' slumber. Dolphin and Alice tried to play mediator in the midst of all this, but the former Monster Maker could see the toll it was taking on his granddaughter. She was half-asleep and rather exasperated by all the blameless yelling. It was unfair to keep her there.

"Go home, Alice," he advised. "Just go home, get some sleep, and I'll let you know what happens in the morning. If you want, I can have Mr. or Mrs. Katou come to get you…"

"No," she replied. "I'd rather stay. They're my friends, and I don't want to have to leave them right now."

He nodded. "All right. If it makes you feel better, go check up on them. Just let the nurses know before you enter."

"Okay."

Though she tried not to, she yawned and rubbed her eyes as she walked back to her friends' shared room. The doctors had agreed to let Koichi remain in Koji's room in order to keep him from doing anything as crazy as slicing open his arteries and veins again. Alice was pretty certain that Koji's heart attack had scared that out of him, but she supposed it was better to assume the worst. As her grandfather had said in relation to Jeri and the D-Reaper, human emotions and desires were always hard to calculate.

Koichi was out of bed and sitting in a chair at his brother's side when she entered. Donated blood was still dripping into his right hand, and he looked dizzy still from the loss of so much. Both his wrists and his neck were bandaged delicately, though he had to scratch underneath the uncomfortable wrappings around his neck.

"You're supposed to be in bed," she informed.

"I woke up and then I couldn't fall back to sleep," he explained. "I feel like somehow all of this is my fault."

"Maybe it is. But who would hold it against you? Certainly not Koji, or your parents, or Satomi, or Grandfather, or me." He didn't make eye contact. "You're the only one who blames you. Now get back in bed and try to sleep. You're supposed to rest now."

"I'm _supposed _to be growing up alongside my brother like a regular kid. I'm not supposed to have to deal with his death, and right after Grandma's…" He shook his head. "It's getting to be too much."

She sighed and took a seat beside him. They spent a few minutes in silence before she asked, "What was that promise you were talking about back there? You wanted Koji to remember some promise you made. What was it?"

"Not long after we came back from the Digital World, I went to visit my grandmother's grave, and Koji came with me. I told him how her dying words were her asking me to find him. Nothing ever hurt that much, so we promised that when we die, we won't waste our dying breaths on words. It'll be a lot easier on everyone around us if we don't."

"I see."

Some bit of rationality returned to him, reminding him of the promise Alice had made at the beginning of all this. She wasn't going to let anyone die. Now she had no choice but to break that promise; it was out of her control. And there was another thing to consider: the deaths of her parents. She was in the same boat he was, and he'd completely forgotten.

"Sorry," he apologized. "I forgot that you've lost a lot of people you loved too. I just won't talk about it."

"If you don't, you'll just be living in denial that this is happening. I don't mind remembering, even if it hurts."

"Will I be that way too?" he asked no one. Alice watched him more in empathy than in sympathy before turning her attention to Koji, who was stirring slightly. She nudged Koichi, who was on it in an instant.

"Koji, Koji, are you okay?" Dumb question, but he could at least get some kind of information on his brother's mood. Koji opened his eyes slowly and reached for a thermos of water on the nightstand. Koichi took it and held it up to him so he could drink. When he'd had his full, he opened his mouth to speak.

"Don't, Koji," Koichi informed. "I'm so sorry that this happened. I didn't mean to make you…" He choked on his own words, feeling tears spring from his eyes once more. Koji managed to clasp his hand.

"It's okay," he whispered. "It's not your fault." He closed his eyes and fell back to sleep, giving Koichi at least some of the comfort he needed to do the same.

But the moment he closed his eyes, all he could see was the extreme pallor of his brother's face and the blue tinge of cyanosis that gripped his fingers and lips as he fell forward, his heart bursting apart.

-------  
It was December 31, New Year's Eve, part of the most important holiday in Japan. All over the country, people were celebrating and praying for prosperity in the coming year. But for the close friends and family of Koji Minamoto, celebrations were even more elaborate than anywhere else. It was the first and last New Year's they would be able to celebrate together, they knew, so they took full advantage of whatever they could.

The day started out with a surprise visit from Alice and Dolphin, who made a special American-style breakfast for the Minamoto family and Ms. Kimura. No one else was allowed to come anywhere near the kitchen until they finished cooking pancakes for everyone. Later, the other former Legendary Warriors showed up to temporarily kidnap the former Warriors of Darkness and Light in order to take them for a special lunch in the Digital World.

They managed to get a Trailmon for the day and went retracing their steps through the Digital World, avoiding the Continent of Darkness just for the sake of keeping their Trailmon this time. All the while, the six friends shared a plain cheese pizza after having argued on the toppings for nearly an hour. It was a comforting journey to look back on everything they'd seen and done, knowing they'd made a huge difference. All six of them wore the same clothes they'd worn on their adventure, adding to the nostalgia as they looked over familiar landscapes.

"Look there!" Takuya pointed, his mouth still full of pizza. He swallowed before adding, "Isn't that the mountain where we helped those KaratsukiNumemon find their women?"

"I think we ended up causing more problems than we solved," Zoë commented. "Grumblemon managed to find the mountain's Fractal Code."

"Don't remind me," J.P. muttered. "That was the absolute last time I tried an attack strategy like _that._"

Five teammates laughed light-heartedly at the memory, but Koichi remained quiet. He hadn't been there; he'd been training under Cherubimon during the entire time. He never had the chance to share that memory.

"Koichi, are you okay?" Koji checked while everyone else turned to look at him.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just remembering some things, that's all."

"Well, what did you remember?" Takuya pressed. "Nothing too embarrassing about us?"

"No, it's nothing."

"Come on, you can tell us," Zoë coaxed with a slight glare at Takuya. "And nothing's really too embarrassing with what we've done. Right guys?"

"Yeah," J.P. agreed. "I mean, look at what we've done all this time."

"The cooking incident," Tommy listed, "where Takuya and Koji nearly poisoned Bokomon and Neemon, not to mention each other. Plus half of us couldn't handle our Beast Spirits when we first got them, though Takuya was the only one that actually forgot we were his friends. Then we got tricked by those Toucanmon that time and lost our digivices. Then there was the time—"

"Tommy, I think he gets the point," Takuya interrupted, visibly wincing from his less than spectacular moments now coming to light.

Koichi wanted to make a comment, but everything he could think of was too inappropriate for the time being. He'd always called these people his friends, but how close were they really? His mother was right in saying that he didn't quite fit in with the rest of them. He didn't have any of these memories that they did. He was an outsider, only allowed in their inner circle because his brother was one of their closest friends. When he was gone, where would that leave him?

From what he could tell, Zoë would try to offer comfort when the day finally did come, but he knew he was not going to be able to hear her words. J.P. and Tommy would be a little more cautious, the former out of respect and the latter out of a lack of familiarity with the brothers. Takuya would try to keep the friendship alive, but even he would have to give up eventually. Koichi didn't know any of them. Koji was the only Warrior who'd really made an impact on his life, an impact that was now becoming a festering wound. So to whom did he have to turn?

Alice, of course. Even though she didn't share the romantic feelings he had, she had been the friend he'd needed. And Dolphin was always going to be there to talk to if he needed it. His mother had always been an important person in his life, so there was no reason she wouldn't be in the days to come. And he now had his father and stepmother to lean on, important considering that they were going to need the comfort just as much as he was going to. Visitation rights were now allowed, so he was going to be able to see them from time to time. It would help ease the hurt a little bit. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

He was fortunate to find some traces of his history in other sites along the way, allowing him to join in on the laughter with the others. But that was all he could join in on. He was still an outsider. The story of his life was in the Continent of Darkness and the Human World. It was in his brother, his parents, and his stepmother. It was in Alice and Dolphin. It was in Jeri. It was in him. It all brought a burning question to his mind: "If it was the other way around and I was dying instead of Koji, would the others realize this too?"

He chose not to answer. This was not the day for him to be depressed. It was a day of celebration, of forgetting illnesses and alienations. He continually reminded himself of that in order to enjoy himself. This was the last party the six Warriors would have. It was unfair for him to ruin it, even for himself.

-------  
It was later that night when their father brought another surprise to them. He took them to the harbor, where Dolphin was waiting on a rented boat. He tightly knotted ropes to hooks to keep the sail up while the twins stared in complete shock.

"Surprised?" Kousei questioned. "It was something I always wanted to show you two, but when the divorce happened, I gave up on it. The best time and place to see the stars clearest are in winter and on the sea. So Dolphin volunteered to help me with this."

"Anything to get me back on a boat again," he joked. "So come on board. I promise you, this is going to be completely unlike anything you've seen before."

It was hard for them to believe. They'd been to the Digital World and two of its moons, so it seemed like they had seen all of what the world had to offer at their young age. But they were wrong. Never before had they sailed a ship on a cold winter's night, looking up at the sky as they breathed wisps of vapor. The waves lightly splashed the sides of their vessel, rocking them only slightly. The sky was a beautiful blue-violet-black. To call it velvet would be blasphemous. Pinpricks of silver-blue light were scattered all across in delicate patterns of order and chaos both.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Dolphin asked Koji. "The light in those stars burns brightly everyday. But it's not until we reach total darkness that we can see it. Isn't that something?"

Koji apparently thought so. A look of understanding graced his face, as though he'd finally gotten the answer to all of his questions. That understanding settled into serene happiness while Koichi watched. He'd never seen anything like it.

"Are you okay?" Kousei checked.

"Huh?" Koichi responded. "Oh. Yeah. Why?"

"Just asking. You know, Koichi, I don't want for us to lose touch when…when…"

Koichi looked at his father in guilt. Not very long ago, he didn't even want to see this man, much less speak to him. If thing hadn't turned out the way they had, he would have left Kousei in a very lonely condition without either of his sons around.

"Don't worry, Dad," he assured. "I'll visit a lot and everything. I'll be sure to." His voice broke as he tried to speak. It was hurting already. He hurriedly wiped tears from his eyes, afraid that someone would find them. His twin walked over to him, and they both resumed staring at the brilliant stars whose light was only dazzling because of the darkness.

When they got home, neither bothered to change before going to bed. It had been a long and exhausting day, so they just collapsed on their beds and fell immediately to sleep. Hours after the boys drifted into their respective subconscious minds, they found themselves on a battlefield. Koji stood on one side with Koichi on the other. Both stared at each other with blank expressions and murderous intentions. It was certainly a nightmare, but Koichi's or Koji's? It was hard to tell.

Koichi ran forward with a curved red sword, the exact blade Duskmon used, while Koji used one of his weapons from his form of Lobomon. He blocked the attack, but barely, receiving a scratch on the side of his head for his near error. He then threw his brother off and attacked, just grazing Koichi's left bicep. Koichi slashed back and locked himself in a deadly sword-to-sword conflict where physical strength alone would determine the victor. They glared at each other as they tried to push the other away. It scared them to no end how much hatred they could see in one another in that moment.

"Is this your dream or mine?" he asked suddenly. His lips did not move at all. It was all in his mind.

"I don't know," Koji replied in the same way. "Maybe it's both of ours."

Their voices and minds were civil, but their bodies were not. In the real world, they could each hear the other's words voice through the quiet bedroom as the battle was fought on the realm of dreams and the planes of reality.

Koichi managed to disarm Koji for the moment, but his brother was quick to regain his weapon and resume the battle. Savagely, they swung their blades, trying desperately to seriously wound or decapitate the other before he could do the same. It was so wrong for them to be doing this, but they could not prevent themselves from fighting. They were not in control of their dream bodies. The nightmare was. The same nightmare that had hunted Koichi from the jungles of his dark heart to the woods of his liberated soul was back and ready to claim its prey. Koji had to share in the consequences.

Koji began to weaken somewhat, and Koichi took full advantage. He put full force behind his attacks, tiring his brother more and more. With each faltering step and lethargic movement, Koichi became more and more worried. Koji should have been able to handle himself in combat like this. What could be wrong?

"Are you all right?" he checked.

"I don't know. It's starting to hurt."

"What is?"

"My arm. And it's hard to breathe."

"Oh God, no. Not this. Not now! Can you wake Satomi or Dad?"

"I'm not sure. I need help now."

But the dream would not let them go. They continued battling, hacking, slicing, and stabbing as they delayed getting Koji help. Another heart attack was coming, and this time, it was not going to be as forgiving.

As though in defiance of his condition, Koji swung madly at Koichi, badly cutting the side of his neck. It made him acutely aware of the bandage he wore in reality and the foolish mistake he'd nearly made to get it. His dreaming form, though, took revenge by slashing at Koji's face, leaving behind a long bloody gash on his cheek. Koji rebounded with a blow to the shoulder with his hilt. In bed, Koichi could feel pain there as he bumped himself against the wall. He swore mildly. The dream was becoming far too realistic. If one of them didn't wake up soon, Koji wouldn't be able to.

"Koji, one of us has to get Dad or Satomi now. I don't know if I can get out of bed. Can you at least try?"

"I don't know. I'll try."

"Please."

In their room, a half-asleep Koji managed to get to his feet while his dreaming mind raged on. He was not going to be able to continue for much longer. He needed help now.

"Koichi, please, you have to help me," he begged.

"I'm trying. Believe me, Koji, I'm trying."

Within the dream, Koji's battle technique was becoming more and more sluggish. Each attempt to block Koichi's sword was merely a reason for him to keep coming on. Just as in all of his nightmares, Koichi tried frantically to regain control of his body, but he could not. He was just as much a victim to the blows and slashes he delivered. And then, swiftly and suddenly, he plunged his sword into his brother's heart. Koji shouted as he fell.

"Koji!" Koichi cried, jumping out of bed in time to grab his brother as he sank to his knees. He slowly lowered himself into the same position in order to support him in the pre-morning darkness. Koji kept his head against Koichi's shoulder the whole time. "Koji?"

"You…you never told me," he noticed.

"Told you what?"

"What it's like to die."

Koichi choked at his brother's question. He was dying. It was final then. Those words, those words he'd never wanted to hear. His mind searched desperately for a comforting answer, but he had nothing to offer. His temporary death had been unusual, as his soul had literally been torn from his body and put through such torment in Cherubimon's equivalent of Hell. But from somewhere in his heart, words formed and softly tried to ease the pain and fear that was coming into both of them.

"I can't lie to you, Koji. It hurt. There's first this terrible, unending pain spreading all throughout your body until finally you feel numb. Then all the light disappears and you're left in darkness, listening to your heartbeat and breathing as they slowly stop." Koji seemed a lot calmer now. Was it over? Or was it just getting worse? He didn't know; he just continued on. "But the darkness, you're not alone in it. Everyone you've ever loved is with you whether they're dead or alive. You just feel it. And then…" He paused for a second, remembering a particular image Cherubimon had shown him of Koji standing in front of a sun or perhaps surrounded by it. "Then there's a bright light. It's something calming, something that keeps you from feeling the pain and fear. I wasn't allowed near it, but you'll probably be."

There was a moment of silence between them as both tried to come to terms with what was finally happening. It was goodbye. One was going to have to grow up alone and the other wasn't going to have the chance. One would be permanently locked in memory while the other would have to fight to retain those memories without pain. Then finally, spurred by that thought, Koji spoke up.

"Koichi, that day. When we found you in the hospital…"

"What?"

"I cried too…that day."

"What are you saying?" He could feel something soaking his shoulder, though he wasn't sure if the last reserves of the former Light Warrior's life force were dripping into him with these new tears. His brother would not explain as he cried. All the sound that came from him was merely his breathing, until that too finally ceased.

"Koji?" Koichi called, but the body in his arms was completely limp and unresponsive. But the pain didn't feel as bad as he'd expected. A part of him was gone, yet still…

He wasn't sure what happened next, but somehow he managed to get dressed in a black sweater and pants and sat in the living room on the couch. Somewhere in between, he told his father and Satomi what had happened, and sometime after that, he'd called Alice. He knew only that because of the crying upstairs and the phone calls going out to random relatives and friends. He was locked in the true chaos Koji had never been able to escape, and it was far worse than the D-Reaper's twisted interpretation of order. The light was gone, and only darkness remained. But this darkness had no stars or comfort. It was not even evil. It was empty. Void of everything.

Yet somewhere in the midst of all that darkness, a single figure in white came through. Her pale features and hair seemed to radiate light while her white sweater and skirt floated on dark winds. She placed her arm around him and let him mourn quietly, tearlessly. How could he even dare to cry when Koji's tears had started the whole problem to begin with?

-------  
The funeral was immediate. There was no time to embalm the body or set it ablaze. Such Earth practices of burial were considered barbaric by the Spirits of the Legendary Warriors, who had agreed to handle the burial precession for Koji in the Digital World. His body was wrapped in a plain white sheet woven of the finest silk in the Digital World, and he was placed in a small trench in the ground in the forest of the Village of Flame, the same place where he'd first evolved. A glass headstone served as a marker. This was going to serve as the proper burial method for all of the human Legendary Warriors when the time came for them to die.

The attendants were few in comparison to how many might have come if they could. Tomoko Kimura, Kousei and Satomi Minamoto, and Rob McCoy stood to one side while the ten Spirits, Takuya Kanbara, Zoë Orimoto, J.P. Shibayama, and Tommy Himi stood on the other. Koichi Kimura felt as though he was directly in the middle, even with Alice McCoy's comforting hand on his shoulder. Still, he could not cry, even though everyone else had given into tears long ago. It felt impossible for him, somehow, to cry. When Koji's Fractal Code merged with that of the Digital World, he could only maintain shaky breathing in order to display his sorrow.

The guests finally began to dwindle down, the other four kids offering their condolences to Koichi while the Spirits took into consideration his need to mourn in private. Everyone else, with the exception of Alice, settled farther back in order to give Koichi some final time to be with his brother. It was only at that moment that Koichi really noticed what Alice was wearing. While everyone else was dressed in black, which had unofficially become the color of mourning when Japan came in contact with the western world, she wore white—the nation's original mourning color. She honestly couldn't have known the custom, as bad as she was with all of Japan's traditions. It must have been her own mourning color, since she always wore black to begin with.

"You knew it all along," he commented. "You knew Koji was going to die."

"I had a suspicion," she admitted. "I looked up some information on the American Heart Association website when I started noticing some of his symptoms. But I tried to tell myself that it was all a coincidence. In the end, I couldn't hide from it."

"No one could," an unexpected voice interrupted. Alice turned in surprise to see Jeri walking toward them. Koichi didn't turn.

"Just go, Jeri. I don't need you making me feel worse," he pleaded.

"I'm not here to make you feel any worse than you do," she replied. "I'm here to pay my respects." She wore a simple dark blue kimono with a pink _obi_ belt. "You're not the only one affected, you know."

"You seem a lot bolder than the last time we met," Alice observed.

"I've lost a lot of people too," she answered. "I lost my mother, I lost Leomon, I lost my friends—I even lost my sanity. So I hate it when people act as though nobody else can understand pain. Because I certainly know it."

"Jeri, I have a question," he began after a silence. "With all you've gone through, did you ever wonder what happens to people who've died? Koji asked me once, and I could only answer what I'd been through."

She sighed. "I don't know. My father said that a part of them always remains with us, and that's something I've always felt in me. I suppose you feel that too, with the bond you and Koji had."

"Actually…" He drifted off, remembering the feeling he had when Koji had died. "It wasn't like our bonds were broken or anything. It was more like they were stretched. I don't know how to describe it."

"You know, I've had a lot of time to think about death and everything after my parents died," Alice added. "And with my heretic beliefs, I have my own theories." Both Koichi and Jeri turned to look at her. "I don't believe there's any true evil, so I don't believe there is a Hell. Or a Heaven for that matter. Life is all a dream that we can't wake from until we die, and once we do, we just have to wait for everyone else to wake up. And you just know someone when you find them. It doesn't matter how much they've aged or stayed the same; you just know. But that's just my belief."

Koichi nodded. It was yet another comforting idea from his friend. He personally didn't enjoy his belief of reincarnation until attaining spiritual nirvana. It would be wrong for Koji to be reborn just to live another hell again. And that night on the boat, when he finally understood that the darkness had a purpose to enhance the light, he definitely looked as though he'd found nirvana. So what happened next? Did he become a _kami_ like he believed happened to his ancestors? Or did he simply "wake up"? He fought desperately to hide his tears as he stood there contemplating this.

"It really helps if you cry," Jeri advised. "I didn't allow myself to, and look what I let myself become."

"I can't… It just doesn't seem right. Koji died because of his tears. I shouldn't remember him by crying."

"Koichi, he showed his emotion freely that day," Alice explained. "It must have been very hard for him. If he could show that much emotion when he thought you were dead, don't you think you owe it to him to do the same?"

"She's right," Jeri agreed. "There are just some things you owe your loved ones. I owed Leomon my right to shape my own destiny rather than let it shape me. You owe it to Koji to cry and show the same gift he gave you."

Koichi's breath caught in his throat. Koji's last words—_not_ his dying words—had been "I cried too…that day." "I cried too." He had been saying all along that it was all right for Koichi to cry like this. It was not going to offend him at all.

So he finally broke down, sobbing into Alice's shoulder while Jeri watched on. The nightmares would continue even worse now that Koji _had_ died. But at least he knew he had the rest of his family and Dolphin, Alice, and even Jeri to turn to when he struggled in fear in the middle of the night. And someday, he too would wake up and tell Koji everything that had happened. After all, that's what brothers were for.

At least, that's what he thought.

**Before anything else happens, this fic is not in any way related to Raven Nightstrider's incredible "Half of My Soul," though it undoubtedly may contain some inspiration.**

**There is no attempt to press any one religion over another, again. All are shown as neutral and as best as I could write them. Koichi's question over what would happen if the roles were reversed had two sources of inspiration: The Sh33p's "Regret" and the _Digimon 02 _episode "Genesis of Evil," where Ken asks the same: if anyone would mourn him if he died instead of Sam. The lack of association between Koichi and the other DigiDestined didn't escape the my notice, so I included that in there. ****It was inspired by The Sh33p's beautiful Karl- and Thomas-centric introspect fic "Regret." The final two sentences in this were also subconsciously inspired by that story.**

**Major thanks to Kelly for pointing out the Japanese mourning color and whatever site she found it on, though I can't seem to remember where it was. Again.**

**One last thing: the comment from Koji about it "not being your fault," came from Sydney's brother Jacob in _The Pretender._ From the many drafts this has gone through, that's the only thing that stayed the same.**

**Not a lot of romance, but that's not what I wanted considering that I'm lousy at writing it. Anyway, leave intelligent remarks if you want to review. And, yes, this fic is over. But you never know what else I'll think of writing. Till the next!**


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